Evolving scholarly communication

Nature Publishing Group and the Alliance for Cellular Signaling formed a partnership in 2001 to develop a comprehensive website for researchers in the field of cellular signalling. This website aimed to evolve the traditional form of publication (an article with supplementary information and links) into something that made better use of web and database technologies, and provided more value to scientists. This article gives an overview of the project, some of the thinking behind it, and how it has developed.     

Developmental links of very early phonological and language skills to second grade reading outcomes: strong to accuracy but only minor to fluency

The authors examined second grade reading accuracy and fluency and their associations via letter knowledge to phonological and language predictors assessed at 3.5, 4.5, and 5.5 years in children in the Jyv?skyl? Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. Structural equation modeling showed that a developmentally highly stable factor (early phonological and language processing [EPLP]) behind key dyslexia predictors (i.e., phonological awareness, short-term memory, rapid naming, vocabulary, and pseudoword repetition) could already be identified at 3.5 years. EPLP was significantly associated with reading and spelling accuracy and by age with letter knowledge. However, EPLP had only a minor link with reading fluency, which was additionally explained by early letter knowledge. The results show that reading accuracy is well predicted by early phonological and language skills. Variation in fluent reading skills is not well explained by early skills, suggesting factors other than phonological core skills. Future research is suggested to explore the factors behind the development of fast and accurate decoding skills.     

Winter Art Education Project

The purpose of this article is to describe how the Department of Art Education at the University of Lapland in Finland has developed winter art as a method of environmental and community‐based art education. I will focus on the Snow Show Winter Art Education Project, a training project funded by the European Union and the State Provincial Office of Lapland. The general aim of the project was to increase the know‐how of winter art in Northern Finland. This goal was put into practice through workshops on snow construction, documentation of winter art, winter‐oriented media production, and snow and ice sculpting; through continuing education seminars, workshops, and school projects for teachers; and through public lectures and seminars on winter and winter art. In this article, I describe the challenges that winter offers to community and environment‐based art education in the North. Further, I introduce the methods of implementation and the outcomes of winter art exercises carried out by several schools in Lapland in cooperation with and inspired by the Snow Show Winter Art Education Project.     

Teacher-perceived supportive classroom climate protects against detrimental impact of reading disability risk on peer rejection

This study examined the role of a supportive classroom climate, class size, and length of teaching experience as protective factors against children's peer rejection. A total of 376 children were assessed in kindergarten for risk for reading disabilities (RD) and rated by their teachers on socially withdrawn and disruptive behaviors. The grade 1 measures included sociometric peer assessment and teachers' self-ratings of their supportiveness in the classroom, together with information on class size and teaching experience. The results showed, first, that the studied social and learning risk factors positively predicted peer rejection in grade 1. Moreover, teacher-reported supportive classroom climate in grade 1 protected children against the detrimental impact of RD risk on peer rejection. Smaller class size, in turn, served as a protective factor against the detrimental impact of social withdrawal on peer rejection. Finally, shorter teaching experience protected against both social and learning risk factors.     

Generalized Hamming Distance

Many problems in information retrieval and related fields depend on a reliable measure of the distance or similarity between objects that, most frequently, are represented as vectors. This paper considers vectors of bits. Such data structures implement entities as diverse as bitmaps that indicate the occurrences of terms and bitstrings indicating the presence of edges in images. For such applications, a popular distance measure is the Hamming distance. The value of the Hamming distance for information retrieval applications is limited by the fact that it counts only exact matches, whereas in information retrieval, corresponding bits that are close by can still be considered to be almost identical. We define a Generalized Hamming distance that extends the Hamming concept to give partial credit for near misses, and suggest a dynamic programming algorithm that permits it to be computed efficiently. We envision many uses for such a measure. In this paper we define and prove some basic properties of the Generalized Hamming distance, and illustrate its use in the area of object recognition. We evaluate our implementation in a series of experiments, using autonomous robots to test the measure's effectiveness in relating similar bitstrings.     

Neuromuscular, metabolic and hormonal profiles of young tennis players and untrained boys

This study compared the neuromuscular, metabolic and hormonal profiles of trained prepubescent tennis players and an untrained group. The boys in the experimental group (n = 9; mean age +/- S.D. = 11.4 +/- 0.5 years) had participated in tennis training for 2.3 +/- 1.0 years and the boys in the control group (n = 9; mean age +/- S.D. = 10.9 +/- 0.4 years) were normal active volunteers. The tennis players were found to be physically more active than the controls when the comparison was made for either 1 year (4.9 +/- 1.8 vs 2.6 +/- 2.5 times per week; P less than 0.05) or for 1 week (3.4 +/- 1.2 vs 0.4 +/- 0.5 times; P less than 0.001) preceding the tests. Choice reaction time was significantly (P less than 0.01) shorter in the experimental group (258 +/- 16 ms) than in the control group (344 +/- 81 ms). Dropping height in the best drop jump was significantly (P less than 0.05) higher in the tennis players (0.46 +/- 0.19 m) than in the control boys (0.27 +/- 0.10 m). The tennis players had significantly lower oxygen consumption at the 'anaerobic threshold' than the controls (P less than 0.05). There were no significant differences between the groups in serum hormone levels. The small differences that existed may have been caused by active participation in sport by the tennis players.     

An overhead reduction technique for mega-state compression schemes

Many of the most effective compression methods involve complicated models. Unfortunately, as model complexity increases, so does the cost of storing the model itself. This paper examines a method to reduce the amount of storage needed to represent a Markov model with an extended alphabet, by applying a clustering scheme that brings together similar states. Experiments run on a variety of large natural language texts show that much of the overhead of storing the model can be saved at the cost of a very small loss of compression efficiency.     

Computer-assisted remedial reading intervention for school beginners at risk for reading disability

The aim of the longitudinal study was to investigate whether a computer application designed for remedial reading training can enhance letter knowledge, reading accuracy, fluency, and spelling of at-risk children. The participants, 7-year-old Finnish school beginners (N=166), were assigned to 1 of 3 groups: (a) regular remedial reading intervention (n=25), (b) computer-assessed reading intervention (n=25), and (c) mainstream reading instruction (n=116). Based on the results, computer-assisted remedial reading intervention was highly beneficial, whereas regular type of intervention was less successful. The results indicated that at-risk children require computer-based letter-name and letter-sound training to acquire adequate decoding and spelling skills, and to reach the level of their non-at-risk peers.     

Growth Mixture Models Outperform Simpler Clustering Algorithms When Detecting Longitudinal Heterogeneity,Even With Small Sample Sizes

The expansion in the number of people entering higher education has resulted in a substantial increase in the proportion of students enrolling in nontraditional modes, such as part-time study. This study examined the question of whether part-time study curtails the development of the types of intellectual capabilities needed for a knowledge-based economy, because the students would have markedly less exposure to a stimulating campus environment than their full-time counterparts. Graduates from discrete full- and part-time programs from 1 university in Hong Kong completed a survey seeking perceptions of the nurturing of a range of capabilities, together with measures of teacher-student relationships and type of teaching experienced. Two hypotheses were tested by structural equation modeling: (a) the same mechanism for capability development operated for full- and part-time modes and (b) the principal element of the mechanism was the nature of teaching and the quality of teacher-student interaction. Hypothesis 1 was supported because configural invariance between hypothesized models for capability development between the 2 modes was found. Hypothesis 2 was also supported because the models showed that the principal influence on capability development came from teaching for understanding, through promoting active learning experiences and the degree and quality of teacher-student interaction.     

Exercise cardiac power and the risk of heart failure in men: A population-based follow-up study

Background:Little is known about exercise cardiac power(ECP),defined as the ratio of directly measured maximal oxygen uptake with peak systolic blood pressure during exercise,on heart failure(HF)risk.We examined the association of ECP and the risk of HF.Methods:This was a population-based cohort study of 2351 men from eastern Finland.The average time to follow-up was 25 years.Participants participated at baseline in an exercise stress test.A total of 313 cases of HF occurred.Results:Men with low ECP(<9.84 mL/mmHg,the lowest quartile)had a 2.37-fold(95%confidence interval(95%CI):1.68-3.35,p<0.0001)hazards ratio of HF as compared with men with high ECP(>13.92 mL/mmHg,the highest quartile),after adjusting for age.Low ECP was associated with a 1.96-fold risk(95%CI:1.38-2.78,p<0.001)of HF after additional adjustment for conventional risk factors.After further adjustment for left ventricular hypertrophy,the results hardly changed(hazards ratio=1.87,95%CI:1.31-2.66,p<0.001).One SD increase in ECP(3.16 mL/mmHg)was associated with a decreased risk of HF by 28%(95%CI:17%-37%).Conclusion:ECP provides a noninvasive and easily available measure from cardiopulmonary exercise tests in predicting HF.However,ECP did not provide additional value over maximal oxygen uptake.