The impact of financial aid on women's demand for higher education

The Educational Amendments of 1972 marked a new direction in public policy regarding the scope and purpose of financial aid to higher education. Aid became more student-oriented, and equality of opportunity for higher education became a goal. This empirical study with national longitudinal data has made a start in policy evaluation of the effect of the 1972 Educational Amendments on the higher education acquired by young women. The most important result of financial aid receipt for young women is that those who received aid averaged 0.64 more years completed of higher education and averaged .145 greater graduation probability than similar women who did not receive aid. These results were obtained in multiple regression models in which the effects of marital status, parental background, geographic locations and economic characteristics, and tuition level were controlled for. These results suggest that policy attempts to stimulate the higher education acquired by enrolled young women by increasing the availability of financial aid are well founded.     

Failing our Children? The comprehension of younger viewers

Educationalists are failing to help children acquire the skills needed to understand television, despite its importance in our society and schools. The present study examines whether a successful course of television literacy could be developed to cover the entire school age range, based on a common approach. Results indicate that the course was successful at all levels, and suggest that further research might identify factors which influence television comprehension.     

An Interdisciplinary Model of School Absenteeism in Youth to Inform Professional Practice and Public Policy

Problematic school absenteeism in youth has long been a complex and vexatious issue for psychologists, educators, and researchers from other disciplines. An examination of problematic school absenteeism from different perspectives over many decades has led to poor comparability across publications, policies, and assessment and intervention protocols. This article briefly reviews literature from psychology, social/criminal justice, and education to outline important factors that influence school absenteeism. An interdisciplinary model is then proposed with an emphasis on common terminology and definitions, comprehensiveness with respect to proximal and distal influences, fluidity and flexibility to account for rapid changes in this population, and user-friendliness to generate suggestions regarding assessment and intervention. Implications of the model are then drawn for professional practice and public policy, including recommendations for individual and systemic intervention at multiple levels of risk and severity.     

Sadhan Basu — a physical chemist extraordinaire

Sadhan Basu was an inspiring teacher and scientist and among the best that our university system has produced. He carried out important and thoughtful research work in the fields of polymers, spectroscopy and quantum chemistry that bear the signature of a highly creative mind. And all these he did with so little resources at his disposal. No wonder that his memory still inspires awe and respect among many of his immensely successful students and colleagues.     

Examiner scoring of ambiguous WISC-R responses

Fabricated test protocols were used to study how effectively examiners agree in scoring ambiguous WISC-R responses. Clinical and school psychologists (N = 62) and graduate students (N = 48) scored WISC-R Similarities, Comprehension, and Vocabulary responses obtained in a group administration procedure. From over 15,000 responses obtained, only unusual, atypical, or ambiguous responses were selected; 726 responses were scored, with 11 groups of 10 raters each scoring 66 responses. Considerable scoring disagreement occurred. Unanimous agreement (within each group of 10 raters) was found on only 13% of the responses, while 80% of the raters agreed on 44% of the responses. Rates of scoring agreement were not related to level of rater experience, but were related to specific subtests. Higher rates of agreement were found on the Similarities and Comprehension subtests than on the Vocabulary subtest for both experienced and inexperienced raters. The results suggest that even with the improved WISC-R manual, scoring remains a difficult and challenging task.     

Conditioned defensive burying in rats: Availability of burying materials

Rats shocked once by a stationary, wire-wrapped prod mounted on the wall of the test chamber incorporated sand, wooden blocks, or commercial bedding material on the floor of the chamber into a defensive response. They moved the available material toward and over the shock prod in all three conditions, adapting the response topography to the particular demands of the available material. In the sand and bedding conditions, the rats buried the prod by pushing and spraying piles of the material with snout and forepaws, whereas, in the blocks condition they picked up the blocks with their teeth and placed them individually around the prod. In Experiment 2, the rats buried the shock prod with blocks even when they had to first carry the blocks to the prod from the back of the chamber. Thus, conditioned defensive burying is not a simple, reflexive response to objects paired with a painful stimulus: it is a complex behavioral sequence that can vary as a function of the availability of burying materials.     

Recognition of facial emotions among maltreated children with high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to examine processing of facial emotions in a sample of maltreated children showing high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Maltreatment during childhood has been associated independently with both atypical processing of emotion and the development of PTSD. However, research has provided little evidence indicating how high rates of PTSD might relate to maltreated children's processing of emotions. METHOD: Participants' reaction time and labeling of emotions were measured using a morphed facial emotion identification task. Participants included a diverse sample of maltreated children with and without PTSD and controls ranging in age from 8 to 15 years. Maltreated children had been removed from their homes and placed in state custody following experiences of maltreatment. Diagnoses of PTSD and other disorders were determined through combination of parent, child, and teacher reports. RESULTS: Maltreated children displayed faster reaction times than controls when labeling emotional facial expressions, and this result was most pronounced for fearful faces. Relative to children who were not maltreated, maltreated children both with and without PTSD showed enhanced response times when identifying fearful faces. There was no group difference in labeling of emotions when identifying different facial emotions. CONCLUSIONS: Maltreated children show heightened ability to identify fearful faces, evidenced by faster reaction times relative to controls. This association between maltreatment and atypical processing of emotion is independent of PTSD diagnosis.     

Energy storage and retrieval

Harnessing sunlight for the production of electrical energy is an engrossing prospect. The crucial concept underlying the success of solar power stations is energy storage and its retrieval on demand which can be most effectively achieved with storage batteries. This article highlights the chemistry of existing and emerging battery technologies.