Promising effects of an intervention: Young children’s literacy gains and changes in their home literacy activities from a bilingual family literacy program in Canada

The goal of this paper was to examine promising effects of a bilingual family literacy program: to track the changes of families’ literacy activities through a bilingual family literacy intervention, and to examine the children literacy gains in both Chinese and English across socioeconomic sub-groups. The intervention was an eight-week, two hours per week, literacy program in three Chinese communities in Toronto. Parents, with their children, participated in the program. The extremely high attendance rate provided evidence that families enjoyed the family literacy intervention and felt that the sessions were worthwhile. For their families’ literacy activities, the three sites followed the same trend: reaching the peak of activity at week four, slightly dropping down at weeks five and six, and then increasing to a second peak at week seven or week eight. Results also showed that across the three groups, children of mothers with lower education levels made fewer gains in their English expressive vocabularies and their Chinese expressive vocabularies, than children whose mothers had a higher level of education.     

The effect of community college enrollment on bachelor's degree completion

Rouse [Rouse, C. E. (1995). Democratization or diversion—the effect of community-colleges on educational-attainment. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 13(2), 217–224] finds that enrollment in a community college may divert students from attaining a bachelor's degree. However, this result may be due to selection bias, as the population of community college students should be quite different from those who attend 4-year institutions in terms of both observable and unobservable characteristics. This study uses propensity score matching to non-parametrically balance a data set from the 1996 Beginning Postsecondary Students survey in order to overcome issues associated with selection bias. Results from a Cox proportional hazards model indicate that attendance at a community college lowers the hazard rate for completing a bachelor's degree. The results are consistent with previous studies.     

Does Institutional Aid Compensate for or Comply with State Policy?

To what extent does state policy for student financial aid affect the distribution of institutional aid awarded to students at public institutions? Using data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey we employ a Tobit model to investigate the relationship between student characteristics, including family income and academic qualifications, and the amount of student financial aid awarded from institutional sources at public masters’ and bachelors’ degree granting institutions. We then ask if the institutional aid is awarded in a manner that complements or compensates for the student financial aid policy in the state. The results support our hypothesis that state policy for student financial aid affects the distribution of institutional aid, but instead of institutional compensation for state policy, we observe what appears to be compliance.     

Family Literacy Programs: Where Have They Come from and Where Are They Going?

Family literacy programs in North America and the United Kingdom have enjoyed widespread public and political support. Thousands of initiatives following a variety of models currently operate under the spectrum of family literacy programs. In edthis paper, the influence of learning theories, the research on children’s early literacy development, and the sociopolitical context with gave rise to the intervention movement, will be reviewed with respect to their impact on current models of family literacy programs. The research on program evaluation is also considered, and is related to current practice and future directions in family literacy programming.     

Preface to Special Topic: Papers from the 82nd American Chemical Society Colloid and Surface Science Symposium, Raleigh, North Carolina, 2008

This Special Topic section of Biomicrofluidics contains original contributions that were presented at the 82nd Colloid and Surface Science Symposium, which took place on 15–18 June 2008 at North Carolina State University. The Symposium covered a wide range of topics that are relevant to the fundamentals of fluidics and their application to biological systems.The recent interest in microfluidics and nanofluidics is constantly increasing due to the numerous applications that these techniques have to offer. They have been used for chemical and biomolecular sensing, separation of charged analytes, and single DNA molecule manipulation. These applications were facilitated by the significant increase in the range of advanced microfabrication and nanofabrication techniques. Improving and extending the range of applicability of micro- and nanofluidic techniques also requires better fundamental understanding of the physics of the transport at small length scales. The transport of fluids and solutes in microchannels and nanochannels usually occurs at very small Reynolds regime. The typical length scale and the surface forces (electrostatic, van der Waals, hydrophobic, hydration, etc.) may be comparable to the size of the channels. All these features often require the development of new experimental techniques and approaches for theoretical analysis.The importance and the substantial recent interest in micro- and nanofluidics prompted the organization of a special session on Electrokinetic Phenomena and Microfluidics as part of the program at the 82nd Colloid and Surface Science Symposium at North Carolina State University in June 2008. The collected papers in this issue of Biomicrofluidics cover some of the very important fundamental and engineering aspects of electrokinetic phenomena in micro- and nanofluidic channels. These include molecular dynamics simulation of biomolecules in confined spaces, analysis of the electric double layer effects on the fluid flow in nanochannels, hydrodynamic resistance to droplet motion in microchannels, electrophoresis in nanocomposite gels, and microfluidics for nanoparticle fabrication. The paper by Srivastava et al.¹ explores the possibility of using microfluidics for fabrication of Janus nanofibers. Chang² presented a theoretical analysis of the electro-osmosis on a salt-free microchannel by simultaneously solving the nonlinear Poisson–Boltzmann equation for the electrostatic potential distribution and the Navier–Stokes equations for the fluid flow. Trahan and Doyle³ reported theoretical analysis of DNA molecule interaction with obstacles in a microchannel. Finally, Labrot et al.⁴ presented studies on the droplet hydrodynamic resistance in a microfluidic channel.We hope that the reader will find the papers useful and informative.     

“Home” and “not home” in children's stories: Getting there—and being worth it

Jon C. Stott teaches Children's Literature at the University of Alberta and also teaches regularly in elementary schools. Christine Doyle Francis teaches at Central Connecticut University.     

Public anonymity and the connected world

We defend public anonymity in the light of the threat posed by digital technology. Once people could reasonably assume that they were fairly anonymous when they left the house. They neither drove nor walked around with GPS devices; they paid their highway tolls in cash; they seldom bought on credit; and no cameras marked their strolls in the park or their walks down the street. Times have changed. We begin with a brief discussion of the concept of anonymity. We then argue that public anonymity helps promote privacy in public. Next, we argue that public anonymity is worth protecting insofar as it promotes autonomy. After that we attempt to show how digital technology threatens public anonymity in the context of CCTV and GPS devices. We argue for a significant scaling back of public surveillance. We close with some thoughts on what we take to be the gratuitous costs imposed on those who would attempt to preserve their anonymity in public.     

Evaluation of 3D-printed molds for fabrication of non-planar microchannels

Replica obtained from micromolds patterned by simple photolithography has features with uniform heights, and attainable microchannels are thus quasi-two-dimensional. Recent progress in three-dimensional (3D) printing has enabled facile desktop fabrication of molds to replicate microchannels with varying heights. We investigated the replica obtained from four common techniques of 3D printing—fused deposition modeling, selective laser sintering, photo-polymer inkjet printing (PJ), and stereolithography (SL)—for the suitability to form microchannels in terms of the surface roughness inherent to the mechanism of 3D printing. There have been limited quantitative studies that focused on the surface roughness of a 3D-printed mold with different methods of 3D printing. We discussed that the surface roughness of the molds affected (1) transparency of the replica and (2) delamination pressure of poly(dimethylsiloxane) replica bonded to flat glass substrates. Thereafter, we quantified the accuracy of replication from 3D-printed molds by comparing the dimensions of the replicated parts to the designed dimensions and tested the ability to fabricate closely spaced microchannels. This study suggested that molds printed by PJ and SL printers were suitable for replica molding to fabricate microchannels with varying heights. The insight from this study shall be useful to fabricate 3D microchannels with controlled 3D patterns of flows guided by the geometry of the microchannels.     

State Spending on Higher Education Capital Outlays

This paper explores the role that state spending on higher education capital outlays plays in state budgets by considering the functional form of the relationship between state spending on higher education capital outlays and four types of state expenditures. Three possible functional forms are tested: a linear model, a quadratic model, and the balance wheel model. The balance wheel model posits that in good economic times, higher education is funded at a higher rate than other state budget categories. In bad economic times, higher education is often one of the first state budget categories to be cut and is cut more deeply than other state budget categories due, in part, to its ability to tap into alternative revenue streams. We find that capital outlays do not conform to the balance wheel model. Instead they appear to have a quadratic relationship with other state budget categories. We discuss the policy implications of these findings for both higher education leaders and state policymakers.