Fetal cardiac responding: a correlate of birth weight and neonatal behavior

Certain intrapartum fetal heart-rate (FHR) patterns are associated with low Apgar scores and other neonatal risks. Intrapartum FHR has been the subject of extensive clinical investigation, but only occasional reference is made to the possible behavioral correlates of this phenomenon. The current investigation found that neonates classified as FHR decelerators had lower birth weights and shorter gestational ages than FHR accelerators. Decelerators exhibited higher baseline heart rate and experienced more frequent uterine contractions than accelerators. Neurobehavioral assessment of these neonates indicated that decelerators had more abnormal reflex ratings and were less behaviorally organized than heart-rate accelerators. The results indicate that FHR responses are associated with prenatal growth, maturity, and possibly stress tolerance, and that intrapartum FHR responses be related to nonoptimal neonatal behavior.     

Watching People Watching Television: what goes on in front of the TV set?

This paper reports an observational study of families watching television in their own homes. Observational data were collected via a video camera housed within a special television cabinet placed in six family households. Results show that family members were absent for substantial proportions of the time the television set was in operation, and even when present did not pay full attention to the screen for more than a minority proportion of that time. Families and family members varied significantly in respect of certain patterns of television watching, but were similar in other respects. The results have implications for understanding the nature of television viewing in the natural viewing environment. Recommendations are offered for further analysis of these data.     

Accessing mainstream: examining the struggle for parents of children who have learning difficulties

In the past decade Ireland has witnessed substantial changes in policy and provision for children with general learning difficulties as government policies and legislation increasingly underpin the move towards more inclusive provision. Despite this series of policy initiatives parents of children who experience Down syndrome and general learning difficulties can encounter serious obstacles in gaining access to mainstream education for their children.
This research project was a study of the experiences of a small sample of parents of children who experience Down syndrome and general learning difficulties in relation to their efforts to access appropriate education and education supports for their child in the mainstream school setting. These parents had to invest extraordinary levels of time, energy, and resources in their struggle to get these children into mainstream school and to support their progress there. At local school level these parents and children had positive experiences, but life has taught them that society offers acceptance as a favour, so they cannot confidently expect acceptance by schools and teachers as a right.     

The Test's the Thing: viewpoints of students with special educational needs

This paper presents views on testing by a cross‐cultural sample of primary and secondary students with special educational needs. While some of the responses indicated that tests were useful for feedback and motivation, half of the sample disliked having tests and found them boring. These negative views were intensified by the marks that the students received and the physical and emotional effects during the testing. As the students viewed tests and assessment as necessary components of school life, the paper concludes that children with special educational needs are entitled to help to overcome their anxieties and that positive classroom practice can help to effect this.     

Tackling Truancy: an examination of persistent non‐attendance amongst disaffected school pupils and positive support strategies

The unauthorised non‐attendance of pupils constitutes an increasing area of concern for educationalists and one which has recently received much media attention. This paper seeks to locate the practice of truancy within an educational context, considers a framework for the support of pupils at risk and offers an ‘in‐school’ approach designed to ameliorate the effects of persistent non‐attendance     

Can There be Applied Philosophy Without Philosophy?

The paper is a critique of the dominant model of applied philosophy. As currently structured, courses in applied philosophy are a response of philosophy departments to administrative demands to increase enrollment units. In order to achieve this goal, the properly philosophical approach to matters of concrete social concern is dropped in favour of decontextualized, ahistorical, and uncritical applications of philosophical theories to immediate practical problems. Using the example of applied ethics, I argue that the key problem besetting current trends in applied philosophy is that they all fail to uncover the contradiction between given social regimes of value and the universal concepts which must be employed to legitimate those regimes. While it is an essential duty of philosophy to be relevant to the practical issues of the day, it must be relevant on philosophical terms. That is, the real application of philosophy to social problems is not the unthinking mapping of a particular philosophical theory onto a problem, but bringing to light the hidden value assumptions definitive of different societies, and shaking to the foundation their claims to legitimacy. I spell out this alternative approach to applied philosophy through an example drawn from my own teaching practice.     

Negative encoding in a language retarded group

Deaf children were presented with a pair of colours comprising a constantly presented option and an occasionally presented option, and were trained always to choose the latter. They were then required to transmit the solution of the problem to a naive subject, under the conditions that they knew that the receiver had the constant, wrong colour and one other colour which altered between trials, but without knowing the identity of the other colour. Because he could only identify the wrong choice, the best solution for the transmitter was to instruct the decoder not to choose the constantly presented colour. The choices made by naive receivers were no better than for subjects who lacked instructions from transmitters who had previously learned not to choose the constant colour. Only experienced receivers, those who had previously acted as transmitters, showed facilitation after repeated trials. A message analysis revealed that negative items were not used. It was concluded that negative forms were not fully integrated into the productive system of these children, and that the primacy of positives previously evident in comprehension has now been demonstrated in production.     

Content Evaluation of an Environmental Science Field Trip

Two important content areas associated with informal environmental science programs are ecology/natural science topics and awareness of environmental problems/issues. This study attempted to evaluate which of these content areas may provide a more optimum learning experience. A quantitative analysis was conducted on two field trips to a science center that represented an ecological oriented program and an environmental issue presentation. Two variables that were chosen as indicators of program success—knowledge retention and attitude change—are outcomes that have been found prevalent in informal, environmental science education. These programs were administered and evaluated during the 1996/1997 school year at the Paul H. Douglas Environmental Science Center at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. The results of this study showed significant gains in science related knowledge following both the ecology and issue oriented treatments. The data indicate that the focus of the program (ecology or issues) did not significantly alter the way students responded to the knowledge section of the evaluation instrument. Results showed little impact on students' affect toward park site or related subject matter following either presentation type. Authors recommend multiple research methods to better evaluate affect changes following an informal environmental science experience.     

Flocking to the crowd: Cultural entrepreneur mobility guided by homophily,market size,or amenities?

Economic activity and innovation clusters in urban areas. Urban economics points to important knowledge and productivity spillovers in cities, in addition to other factors like thicker markets, lower transportation costs, and consumptive amenities. Yet thus far little work has analyzed how these different factors drive migration decisions of arts-related entrepreneurs, especially when they work in online platforms for fundraising. We use data on the largest US crowdfunding platform to identify relocating creators, allowing us to identify which kinds of regions are attracting and retaining more of this sort of talent. We test for the influence of clustering based on homophily, migration to larger markets, and relocation toward particular geographic amenities. Overall we find the strongest evidence for homophily and some distinct tendencies favoring certain regional amenities. Importantly, we both identify general relocation patterns among crowdfunding creatives and break down the attracting features for different types of creators. An examination of (net) migration by different categories of projects, such as musicians or filmmakers, reveals important heterogeneity in the attractors. For example, musicians are drawn stronger music sectors, while writers seek more isolation from other writers. This helps inform the interregional competition for talent and “creative class,” especially among a group of relatively footloose arts- and culture-intensive entrepreneurs.