An Internet-Based Course: Leadership Issues

It comes as no surprise that persons in leadership roles face many decisions related to providing distance learning experiences, especially ones centered on the Internet. In this paper we will try to focus upon leadership issues that arose during the creation and offering of an Internet-based course for high school chemistry teachers. One of us served as the department chair, another as the professor of record and course designer, and the third as a researcher who developed a systematic case study of the course.     

A Two-Year Program of Counselor Education

If school counseling is to be a career commitment, not a temporary or occasional assignment, the school counselor must possess some special expertise that enables him to make a unique contribution to the school. It follows that counselor educators should identify this special expertise as precisely as possible and then offer an instructional program designed to develop it. Since such special expertise is not likely to be acquired without extensive and intensive training, the instructional program will ordinarily require a minimum of two years of full-time study. This position paper elaborates the rationale for the above beliefs and attempts to suggest directions in which they may lead.     

Training principles: evaluation of modes and methods of resistance training--a coaching perspective

Current information and evidence indicate that for most activities free weight training can produce superior results compared to training with machines, particularly when the free weight training involves complex, multi-joint exercises. A number of reasons can account for the superiority of free weights; the major factor deals with mechanical specificity. Mechanical specificity is concerned with appropriate movement patterns, force application and velocity of movement. Considering the available evidence that adherence to the concept of specificity of exercise and training can result in a greater transfer of training effect then free weights should produce a more effective training transfer. Therefore, the majority of resistance exercises making up a training programme should include of free weight exercises with emphasis on mechanical specificity (i.e. large muscle mass exercises, appropriate velocity, contraction type etc.). Generally, machines should be used as an adjunct to free weight training and, depending upon the sport, can be used to a greater or lesser extent during various phases of the training period (preparation, pre-competition, competition).     

Physical profiles of elite,sub-elite,regional and age-group netballers

Physical profile data from elite, sub-elite, regional, under 21s (U21), under 19s (U19) and under 17s (U17) (n = 845) players from a state netball association in Australia were analysed. Within season changes were examined for the elite and sub-elite players. Longitudinal changes were examined for the elite across four consecutive netball seasons.

Elite were significantly older (24.3 ± 3.4years), taller (182.4 ± 7.2cm) and heavier (73.42 ± 6.95kg) than other playing levels (p < 0.001, ES 0.49–3.26) and had higher vertical jump (VJ) data compared to all groups (p < 0.001, ES 0.47–0.93). U17’s were significantly faster than elite, sub-elite and U19 players over 5m (p < 0.05, ES 0.36–0.58) while elite were faster over 20m compared to all groups (p < 0.01, ES 0.45–0.72). Elite achieved a greater distance (1350.8m; p < 0.05, ES 0.32–0.50) in the Yo-YoIRT1 compared to the sub-elite, regional, U19 and U17. VJ height significantly increased from the 2014 (51.6 ± 4.8cm) to the 2017 season (59.6 ± 6.3cm) for the elite players (p < 0.01, ES 1.18). Yo-YoIRT1 test scores increased significantly between the pre-season and in-season phases (p < 0.05, ES 0.17).     

Statistical query expansion for sentence retrieval and its effects on weak and strong queries

The retrieval of sentences that are relevant to a given information need is a challenging passage retrieval task. In this context, the well-known vocabulary mismatch problem arises severely because of the fine granularity of the task. Short queries, which are usually the rule rather than the exception, aggravate the problem. Consequently, effective sentence retrieval methods tend to apply some form of query expansion, usually based on pseudo-relevance feedback. Nevertheless, there are no extensive studies comparing different statistical expansion strategies for sentence retrieval. In this work we study thoroughly the effect of distinct statistical expansion methods on sentence retrieval. We start from a set of retrieved documents in which relevant sentences have to be found. In our experiments different term selection strategies are evaluated and we provide empirical evidence to show that expansion before sentence retrieval yields competitive performance. This is particularly novel because expansion for sentence retrieval is often done after sentence retrieval (i.e. expansion terms are mined from a ranked set of sentences) and there are no comparative results available between both types of expansion. Furthermore, this comparison is particularly valuable because there are important implications in time efficiency. We also carefully analyze expansion on weak and strong queries and demonstrate clearly that expanding queries before sentence retrieval is not only more convenient for efficiency purposes, but also more effective when handling poor queries.     

The American Library Consultant Overseas

Information is a resource for development, which every country, developed or developing, must use to produce a national outlook. Many people view it as a raw material and commodity capable of being exploited for personal gains and for the good of a nation. However, the idea of an information society is not a global phenomenon. While there is a glut of information in developed countries, there is a dearth in developing ones. Against this background of information lag, this article examines the information divide in contemporary societies.