An Analysis of Academic Library Web Pages for Faculty

Web sites are increasingly used by academic libraries to promote key services and collections to teaching faculty. This study analyzes the content, location, language, and technological features of fifty-four academic library Web pages designed especially for faculty to expose patterns in the development of these pages.     

A study of clinical questions posed by hospital clinicians.

OBJECTIVE: This article presents the results of complementary research studies on the behaviors of hospital clinicians in asking clinical questions and the relationship between asking of questions, outcome of information searches, and success in problem solving. METHODS: Triangulation in research methods--a combination of mailed questionnaires, interviews, and a randomized controlled study--was employed to provide complementary views of the research problems under study. RESULTS: The survey and interviews found that clinical problems (concerned mainly with therapy and equipment or technology) were expressed as statements rather than questions (average number of concepts = 1.7), that only slightly more than half (higher for doctors) of problems could be solved, and that the majority of clinical questions were not well formed. An educational workshop however improved clinicians' formulation of questions, but the use of structured prompting was found to improve building of hypotheses in the doctors' group without training. The workshop also improved satisfaction with the obtained information and success in problem solving. Nonetheless, for both the experimental and control groups, more structured and complete questions or statements did not mean higher success rates in problem solving or higher satisfaction with obtained information. CONCLUSION: The triangulation methods have gathered complementary evidence to reject the hypothesis that building well-structured clinical questions would mean higher satisfaction with obtained information and higher success in problem solving.     

缅甸宛江桥周围冲刷的研究

对缅甸宛江桥桥墩周围的冲刷、桥梁通车时的稳定性及其对通航条件的影响进行分析.HEC-RAS模型用来对河道中的水流状况尤其是在桥正常运营时航道内的水流条件进行实际分析,旨在预测桥墩周围可能发生的最大冲刷,并将结论用于缅甸将来的桥梁建设事业之中.模型计算的结果与实测冲刷作了比较,在急流时,使用相同糙率的情况下,一维数值模拟得较好,数值模拟得到的水位与观测的结果一致,表明HEC-RAS模型预测冲刷深度是可行的.     

Correlation analysis-based image segmentation approach for automatic agriculture vehicle

INTRODUCTION In recent years,harvesting crop by combine has become more and more popular in China.In2003,combines were used to harvest23%of rice and71%of wheat.The work described here is part of a pro-ject aimed at researching automatic combines who follow the cut-uncut edge of the crops automatically to reduce the driver’s fatigue from the intensive work.Much attention has been focused on vision-bas-ed automatic agriculture vehicle.Image segmenta-tion is the key to extracting the guida…     

Do Users Experience Real Sociability Through Social TV? Analyzing Parasocial Behavior in Relation to Social TV

The purpose of this study is to explore the ways in which users build parasocial relationships via social TV, and the implications for sociability and usability in future media. Focusing on parasocial behavior, this study examines how sociability and usability influence the attitudes and intentions of social TV (STV) users. The findings from experiments and a user survey indicate mediating and moderating roles of parasociability in the effect of performance on intention. The results showed that STV viewing and interaction were positively associated with parasocial experience. Parasocial relationships and interaction, in turn, were positively associated with the viewers’ perception of usability and sociability, and intentions. This study reveals the links among an emerging media experience, social TV, and users’ interaction with mediated realities.     

Special education and general education preservice teachers’ co-teaching experiences: a comparative synthesis of qualitative research

Co-teaching is commonly used to support students with disabilities in inclusive educational settings. However, there is often a gap between the potential effectiveness of co-teaching and actual classroom practice. This study examined preservice teachers’ co-teaching experiences to better understand this gap to identify potential practices for improving teacher training and service delivery. A review of 11 studies revealed that both special education and general education preservice teachers believed that co-teaching practices provided them opportunities to communicate and work collaboratively. Both groups agreed on the significant impact of personality in co-teaching as well as challenges in implementing co-teaching. Furthermore, special education preservice teachers noted that they lacked content knowledge, whereas general education preservice teachers thought they needed more training in the provision of accommodations and modifications. Study limitations, areas for future research, and implications for preservice teacher preparation are discussed.     

Failure to obtain value enhancement by within-trial contrast in simultaneous and successive discriminations

The present research tested the generality of the “work ethic“ effect described by Clement, Feltus, Kaiser, and Zentall (2000). In Experiment 1, we trained 10 pigeons on a pair of either simultaneous or successive discriminations. One discrimination followed a high-effort requirement (20 pecks to the center key) and the other followed a low-effort requirement (1 peck). Contrary to Clement et al.’s results, we found that preferences between the S⁺ and S⁻ stimuli in transfer tests depended on the event that initiated the trial: Pigeons preferred the stimulus from the baseline discrimination whose initiating event was most dissimilar from that preceding the test trial. Preferences were similar but less extreme in the successive condition. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether test preferences depended on the amount of training. A total of 12 pigeons were trained on a pair of simultaneous discriminations, except that test sessions were scheduled after every three baseline sessions. Preferences increased across test sessions but were similar to those in Experiment 1. Together with Vasconcelos, Urcuioli, and Lionello-DeNolf (2007a), our study represents a second failure to replicate Clement et al.’s work ethic effect. The finding that preference depends on the event that initiates the test trial suggests that choice probes may not provide unambiguous assessments of stimulus value.