Cable Communications

Clarification of Rules on Cable Television and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Federal Register 39:73:14288 - 14300, April 22, 1974)

Richard Adler and Walter S. Baer's The Electronic Box Office: Humanities and Arts on the Cable (Palo. Alto, Calif.; Aspen Program, 770 Welsh Rd., 1974 -- $3.95, paper ... also New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1974 -- $11.00)     

Effect of Students' After-School Activities on Teachers' Academic Expectancies

Teacher expectancies can have an impact on students' academic achievement. These expectancies can be based on diverse student characteristics, only one of which is past academic performance. The present study investigated three student individual differences that teachers may use when forming academic expectancies: the sex of the student, the family socioeconomic status (SES) of the student, and the student's after-school activities. Results indicated teachers held higher grade, graduation, and college attendance expectancies for females than for males and for middle-SES than low-SES students. Also, students who participated in extracurricular activities were expected to achieve more academically than either students who were employed after school or who did nothing after school. The latter two groups did not elicit different teacher expectancies. Interactions revealed that (a) lowest expectations were held for low-SES males who did nothing after school and (b) the difference in graduation expectancies between the SES groups was only half as great for students who took part in extracurricular activities than it was for students who had no involvements after school or who had jobs. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.     

Development and Effectiveness of a Dairy Foods Curriculum Packet and Inservice and the Assessment of Barriers to Dairy Foods Education

ABSTRACT: A Dairy Foods Curriculum Packet and inservice training were provided to South Dakota high school agricultural education instructors. Instructors rated barriers to implementation of teaching dairy foods as "small to medium barriers." After curriculum distribution and inservice training, more than half of instructors indicated an increase in class time spent on dairy foods instruction. More than half of instructors taught a greater variety of dairy foods topics after receiving the curriculum. More than 1/3 of instructors who increased dairy foods instruction attributed 75% or more of their increase to the packet and inservice. High school dairy foods education can be enhanced by providing curriculum and training to instructors. Dairy foods education is necessary to ensure high school graduates are educated about dairy products and exposed to potential dairy science careers.     

Captions, consistency, creativity, and the consensual assessment technique: New evidence of reliability

The consensual assessment technique (CAT) is a measurement tool for creativity research in which appropriate experts evaluate creative products [Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity in context: Update to the social psychology of creativity. Boulder, CO: Westview]. However, the CAT is hampered by the time-consuming nature of the products (asking participants to write stories or draw pictures) and the ratings (getting appropriate experts). This study examined the reliability of ratings of sentence captions. Specifically, four raters evaluated 12 captions written by 81 undergraduates. The purpose of the study was to see whether the CAT could provide reliable ratings of captions across raters and across multiple captions and, if so, how many such captions would be required to generate reliable scores, and how many judges would be needed? Using generalizability theory, we found that captions appear to be a useful way of measuring creativity with a reasonable level of reliability in the frame of CAT.     

Forgeries of Fossils in “Amber”: History,Identification and Case Studies

The appeal of ancient fossilized tree resin, or amber, has made pieces with animal and plant inclusions particularly prized. Unfortunately, amber forgeries are more convincingly and routinely made than most other kinds of fossils, by embedding organisms in natural resins (e.g., copal) or synthetic resins (especially polyester) or by filling a carved niche in a natural piece of amber with resin and a modern inclusion. The confusion of organisms in copal (forged and natural) for ones in amber has a long history. Reviewed here are simple tests for discerning forgeries and natural inclusions in both substances. We discuss an old but sophisticated technique for crafting amber forgeries from authentic amber and present several new examples from old collections in two large museum collections. Also discussed is the widespread use of polyester resin forgeries in the Dominican Republic and Mexico.