The Role of Language in a Journalistic Interpretive Community

Drawing on anniversary-edition articles and interviews with journalists at Jakarta Post, Indonesia’s largest English-language news outlet, we argue that language of publication directly informs the narratives a journalistic interpretive community [Zelizer, Barbie. 1993. “Journalists as Interpretive Communities.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10: 219–237] develops to position itself as a news authority. Analysis showed that associations with English as a foreign language in Indonesia influenced stories of the newspaper’s professional values and practice, and the ways it conceptualized readership. The study contributes to the growing body of literature that examines intersections of journalism and language—in this case, English as a language of publication in a global context.     

Computer Literacy Needs in a Traditional Library Literacy Program: Results of a Needs Analysis

This study reports the results of a needs analysis of literacy programs for a library system serving three rural and suburban counties. It examines the computing skills and needs of literacy tutors as well as native-speaking and English language learner (ELL) literacy tutees enrolled in the programs. Paper surveys were mailed to tutors, who were asked to complete a survey themselves and assist their tutees to complete one. Results of this study offer insights into the incorporation of digital literacy into traditional adult literacy programs focusing on the needs, wants, and support systems of user groups.     

Using digital images of the zebra finch song system as a tool to teach organizational effects of steroid hormones: a free downloadable module

Zebra finch song behavior is sexually dimorphic: males sing and females do not. The neural system underlying this behavior is sexually dimorphic, and this sex difference is easy to quantify. During development, the zebra finch song system can be altered by steroid hormones, specifically estradiol, which actually masculinizes it. Because of the ease of quantification and experimental manipulation, the zebra finch song system has great potential for use in undergraduate labs. Unfortunately, the underlying costs prohibit use of this system in undergraduate labs. Further, the time required to perform a developmental study renders such undertakings unrealistic within a single academic term. We have overcome these barriers by creating digital tools, including an image library of song nuclei from zebra finch brains. Students using this library replicate and extend a published experiment examining the dose of estradiol required to masculinize the female zebra finch brain. We have used this library for several terms, and students not only obtain significant experimental results but also make gains in understanding content, experimental controls, and inferential statistics (analysis of variance and post hoc tests). We have provided free access to these digital tools at the following website: http://mdcune.psych.ucla.edu/modules/birdsong.     

Improving graduate education to support a branching career pipeline: recommendations based on a survey of doctoral students in the basic biomedical sciences

Today's doctoral programs continue to prepare students for a traditional academic career path despite the inadequate supply of research-focused faculty positions. We advocate for a broader doctoral curriculum that prepares trainees for a wide range of science-related career paths. In support of this argument, we describe data from our survey of doctoral students in the basic biomedical sciences at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Midway through graduate training, UCSF students are already considering a broad range of career options, with one-third intending to pursue a non-research career path. To better support this branching career pipeline, we recommend that national standards for training and mentoring include emphasis on career planning and professional skills development to ensure the success of PhD-level scientists as they contribute to a broadly defined global scientific enterprise.     

Attitudes to cadaveric organ donation in Irish preclinical medical students

There is a worldwide shortage of organs for transplantation. It has been shown that the attitude of healthcare professionals can improve the rates of organ donation, and that educational programs aimed at improving both attitudes and knowledge base of professionals can have positive outcomes. Although there has been research carried out on this topic, there has been none in Ireland. Anatomy dissection can be a stressor to medical students-we investigate the attitudes of Irish students to organ donation and how they change with exposure to anatomy dissection. A questionnaire was administered to first year students in the School of Medicine in University College Dublin, Ireland, three times over a nine-week period at the commencement of classes in an academic year. The attitudes of the students were positive throughout regarding organ donation by a stranger, a family member, or themselves. There was, however, a significant decrease in support for the donation of a family member's organs in a minority of students. Irish students' attitudes to postmortem organ donation are positive and are not changed by exposure to the dissecting room. There is support for the donation of organs, and willingness among students to donate their own organs and support donation by family members.     

Harnessing technology to improve formative assessment of student conceptions in STEM: forging a national network

Concept inventories, consisting of multiple-choice questions designed around common student misconceptions, are designed to reveal student thinking. However, students often have complex, heterogeneous ideas about scientific concepts. Constructed-response assessments, in which students must create their own answer, may better reveal students' thinking, but are time- and resource-intensive to evaluate. This report describes the initial meeting of a National Science Foundation-funded cross-institutional collaboration of interdisciplinary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education researchers interested in exploring the use of automated text analysis to evaluate constructed-response assessments. Participants at the meeting shared existing work on lexical analysis and concept inventories, participated in technology demonstrations and workshops, and discussed research goals. We are seeking interested collaborators to join our research community.     

Prescribed-time containment control with prescribed performance for uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems

The existing studies on prescribed-time control cannot directly deal with nonlinear functions which don’t satisfy Lipschitz growth conditions. No results are available for prescribed-time containment control of pure-feedback UNMASs with prescribed performance. Therefore, completely unknown nonlinear function, prescribed-time tracking of system states and prescribed performance of containment errors are simultaneously considered in this paper. Fuzzy logic systems are utilized to approximate completely unknown nonlinear function. Prescribed-performance function is introduced and further incorporated into a novel speed function. Combining the proposed speed function and barrier Lyapunov function, this article presents a novel adaptive fuzzy prescribed-time containment control method which can guarantee, under prescribed performance, all followers converge to a convex formed by dynamic leaders in a prescribed time. Moreover, all tracking errors converge to predefined regions in a prescribed time. The effectiveness of the proposed prescribed-time containment control method are confirmed by strict proof and simulation.     

Perspective Paper: Assessing Air Quality as Part of a Physical Therapy Plan of Care

Purpose: The purposes of this clinical perspective paper are (1) to expand physical therapists’ awareness to the topic of air quality as a health priority when providing professional services; and (2) to provide templates for screening the indoor clinical environments and patient profiles to avert respiratory exacerbations, especially in persons with asthma. Summary of Key Points: The location where a physical therapist practices determines the air quality indices to which a person is exposed. Poor indoor air quality can expose a person to even greater compromise of respiration (ie, Sick Building Syndrome) than outdoor air quality secondary to an array of factors like building materials, the ventilation exchange rate of an enclosed space, chemicals used in cleaning, and humidity. Statement of Conclusions: Extrinsic (ie, environmental) and intrinsic (eg, pre-disposition to airway hypersensitivity) factors must be accounted for by physical therapists to safeguard their patients and themselves from experiencing respiratory compromise and/or distress as a result of a treatment session or their place of employment. Recommendations: Efforts to screen indoor environments for potential triggers and patient risk profiles for abnormal airway reactivity should routinely be undertaken. Individualized Action Plans should be prospectively prepared and readied for implementation when warranted.Key Words: asthma, Sick Building Syndrome, indoor air quality, respiratory impairment     

Bowling ball dynamics revealed by miniature wireless MEMS inertial measurement unit

This paper presents a novel sensor technology to deduce the dynamics of a bowling ball. The sensor, a miniature wireless inertial measurement unit (IMU), incorporates MEMS accelerometers and angular rate gyros, a microcontroller, a low power RF transceiver, and a rechargeable battery. When embedded in a bowling ball, the IMU transmits the acceleration and angular velocity data that define the dynamics of the ball starting with the bowler’s delivery and its motion in the lane. Example results from professional bowlers illustrate how this technology can be used to assess bowler skill and ball performance. For instance, the IMU accurately measures the spin dynamics of the ball which are crucial to develop the ball “hook.” An analysis of ball dynamics in the lane is distilled to a measurable “hook potential” metric for further assessing bowler skill. Finally, the sensor presented herein is believed to be the world’s smallest, wireless IMU. This highly miniaturized and wireless design will enable parallel training systems for many sports, including basketball, baseball, crew, cricket, golf, fly fishing, soccer, softball, tennis, rowing, among others.     

面向个性化推荐的快速关联规则挖掘算法

关联规则挖掘是解决电子商务推荐问题的重要方法之一.针对传统关联规则挖掘算法在解决移动电子商务环境个性化推荐问题时反复扫描数据库,频繁项挖掘效率低,关联规则挖掘准确率低以及规则大量冗余等不足,提出一个基于事务矩阵和用户兴趣度的关联规则挖掘算法(Matrix-and-Interestingness-based Association Rules Mining,MIbARM).该算法仅需扫描一次数据库,并在挖掘过程中不断缩小算法搜索空间以避免生成冗余候选项,同时避免了冗余规则挖掘,从而提高了挖掘效率.最后,在四组人工数据和160种参数组合的数值实验环境下,引入Apriori、CBAR 及BitTableFI算法对MIbARM进行对比验证.结果表明,在不减少有趣规则的前提下,MIbARM不但可有效避免冗余候选项集的产生,而且大幅减少了冗余规则数量,极大提高了算法的搜索效率,同时提升了个性化推荐的质量,更适用于移动电子商务环境下的个性化推荐问题.