Thinking Spatially: Teaching an Undervalued Practice Skill

Spatial thinking, which is taught and practiced in many of the social sciences, is a skill that is often overlooked in the social work curriculum. Spatial thought increases perception, logic, and organized cognition of goals and therefore holds promise for social work practice. Developing skills in spatial thought offers social workers additional tools for problem solving at all practice levels. Finally, thinking spatially raises awareness of problem-solving techniques in relation to environmental resources, a key aspect of systems theory. Fortunately, spatial thinking can be easily integrated into a variety of social work classes helping students master the skill and understand its importance. This article defines and describes spatial thinking, explores its fit in various areas of the social work curriculum, and discusses ways its use can be encouraged.     

Direct Instruction Microcomputing in Primary Schools: manipulation of critical instructional variables

This article reports on a study carried out into the relationships between the component skills involved in practical work assessment. The skills concerned are observing, manipulating, planning, interpreting, reporting and self‐reliance. The literature relating to inter‐skill relationships is reviewed. Data derived from the study suggest that interpretation and planning skills are strongly related to one another, whereas performance on reporting, observation and self‐reliance skills are relatively distinct, both from one another and from all other component skills.     

A DIALOGICAL APPROACH TO CRITICAL BIBLE STUDY: THE USE OF SCHWABIAN DELIBERATION TO INTEGRATE THE WORK OF BIBLE SCHOLARS WITH EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

This article uses analytic tools provided by Joseph Schwab to address a “practical” problem faced by many liberal religious educational institutions: the tension between historical-critical study of the Bible and an affective connection to it. This problem is painted in broad strokes; then two contemporary Bible scholars, Jeffrey Tigay and Yair Zakovitch, are analyzed for the “principles of enquiry” used in their disciplinary orientations. This analysis is merged with a dialogical hermeneutics approach to text, using the work of Kepnes, Buber, and Gadamer. The article concludes by considering how this study might inform Bible curricula in liberal religious educational contexts.     

Cascade optical chromatography for sample fractionation

Optical chromatography involves the elegant combination of opposing optical and fluid drag forces on colloidal samples within microfluidic environments to both measure analytical differences and fractionate injected samples. Particles that encounter the focused laser beam are trapped axially along the beam and are pushed upstream from the laser focal point to rest at a point where the optical and fluid forces on the particle balance. In our recent devices particles are pushed into a region of lower microfluidic flow, where they can be retained and fractionated. Because optical and fluid forces on a particle are sensitive to differences in the physical and chemical properties of a sample, separations are possible. An optical chromatography beam focused to completely fill a fluid channel is operated as an optically tunable filter for the separation of inorganic, polymeric, and biological particle samples. We demonstrate this technique coupled with an advanced microfluidic platform and show how it can be used as an effective method to fractionate particles from an injected multicomponent sample. Our advanced three-stage microfluidic design accommodates three lasers simultaneously to effectively create a sequential cascade optical chromatographic separation system.     

Persistent heterogeneity of R&D intensities within sectors: Evidence and policy implications

Do firms in the same sector converge towards the same R&D intensities? Previous research has often assumed this to be true. A closer examination, using microdata from the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard for the years 2000–2015, shows considerable heterogeneity in R&D intensities among firms in the same sector, and that this heterogeneity persists over time. Statistical tests of convergence show that the variation in R&D intensities does not decrease over time (i.e. no σ-convergence), although firms with an R&D intensity below the industry average do seem to catch up with the leaders (i.e. evidence of β-convergence). Overall, firms in the same industry do not converge to a common R&D intensity. Policy implications are discussed.     

An investigation of the accuracy and reliability of body composition assessed with a handheld electrical impedance myography device

The purpose of this study was to compare the body fat per cent (BF%) assessed with a unique handheld electrical impedance myography (EIM) device, along with other popular methods, to dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA). Participants included 33 males (aged 24.3?±?4.6 years) and 38 females (aged 25.3?±?8.9 years) who completed 2 visits separated by 24–72?h. The assessments included DXA, bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), skinfold measures (SKF), and three separate EIM measurements. No significant differences in BF% (P?>?0.05) were found between all EIM assessments when compared against DXA for both males and females for each visit. All methods showed no significant differences in BF% (P?>?0.05) between days within themselves. Across both days, the standard error of the estimate (SEE) for the EIM measurements ranged from 2.66% to 3.15%, the SEE for BIA was 2.80 and 2.85, and for SKF was 2.90 and 2.82. The 95% limits of agreement ranged from ±5.34% to ±6.38% for EIM measurements and were highest for SKF (±7.42% and ±7.47%). The total error for both days was largest for SKF (5.20% and 5.35%) and lowest for the EIM measurements (2.48–3.24%). This investigation supports use of a handheld EIM device as an accurate and reliable method of estimating BF% compared to DXA in young, apparently healthy individuals with BF% in the range of 10–22% for males and 20–32% in females and suggests this EIM device be considered a viable alternative to other established field measurements in this population.     

High-school students' need for cognition,self-control capacity,and school achievement: Testing a mediation hypothesis

In the present article, we examine the hypothesis that high-school students' motivation to engage in cognitive endeavors (i.e., their need for cognition; NFC) is positively related to their dispositional self-control capacity. Furthermore, we test the prediction that the relation between NFC and school achievement is mediated by self-control capacity. A questionnaire study with grade ten high-school students (N = 604) revealed the expected relations between NFC, self-control capacity, and school achievement. Sobel tests showed that self-control capacity mediated the relation between NFC and school grades as well as grade retention.     

The ideology of student engagement research

In a series of recent papers, Nick Zepke has criticised those researching student engagement in higher education for uncritically supporting neoliberalism. The current highly politicised nature of higher education means that clarity about the political implications of engagement research is crucial. This conceptual paper argues that in focusing on literature on students’ engagement in learning, Zepke overlooks another substantial body of engagement literature, on students’ participation in decisions about learning and teaching. By exploring the political alignment of two of the key models used to conceptualise students’ engagement in decision-making, the paper argues that a central element of the research into student engagement is in fact directly opposed to neoliberal approaches to higher education. Student engagement has been deployed both for and against neoliberalism. Zepke has argued that the research on engagement sides with neoliberalism; I show that the research that focuses on student engagement in decision-making supports the opposition.     

Patenting the bomb: nuclear weapons, intellectual property, and technological control

During the course of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government secretly attempted to acquire a monopoly on the patent rights for inventions used in the production of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. The use of patents as a system of control, while common for more mundane technologies, would seem at first glance to conflict with the regimes of secrecy that have traditionally been associated with nuclear weapons. In explaining the origins and operations of the Manhattan Project patent system, though, this essay argues that the utilization of patents was an ad hoc attempt at legal control of the atomic bomb by Manhattan Project administrators, focused on the monopolistic aspects of the patent system and preexisting patent secrecy legislation. From the present perspective, using patents as a method of control for such weapons seems inadequate, if not unnecessary; but at the time, when the bomb was a new and essentially unregulated technology, patents played an important role in the thinking of project administrators concerned with meaningful postwar control of the bomb.