Out in school: talking about sexual orientation and challenging homophobia across the Key Stage 4 curriculum

Rates of sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancy amongst the under-16s are causing increasing concern. There is limited evidence about the sexual behaviour and sex education preferences of this age group, especially of those from Black and minority ethnic groups. This study aimed to provide data on early heterosexual risk behaviour, and to examine preferences for the content and delivery of sex and relationships education (SRE), across ethnicity, gender and school year to inform priority setting and sex education strategies. A cross-sectional study of 3334 13–17-year-olds from 10 English urban and suburban secondary schools was conducted. Multivariate analysis was performed to examine the independent effect of demographic variables on sexual experience and preferences for sex education. A number of important differences in the sexual experience and condom use of males and females across the ethnic groups were identified. Differences in preferences for the content and delivery of sex education were also identified, particularly between male and female pupils. The findings indicate the potential for quite wide variation in sexual experience and preferences within school classrooms. The challenge for educators is therefore to develop SRE curricula that are inclusive within the constraints of school teaching.     

引进国际职业标准升级传统会计专业的若干思考——以青岛职业技术学院中爱合作会计专业为例

作为直接服务于经济建设和社会发展的教育类型,高职教育必须与经济社会发展接轨,在人才培养理念、内容和标准上同步做出适应性的改革与升级。就传统会计专业而言,随着行业发展趋势和经济发展形势的要求,在人才培养的目标、规格定位和培养内容、方式等方面同样需要适应性的转型和升级。青岛职业技术学院采取以中外合作办学项目为平台,引入国际先进会计标准等优质教育资源升级改造传统会计专业课程体系和标准,实践证明,这是一条直接可行、经济有效的路径。     

从薄弱到优质——以大连市第71中学和西岗区大同小学转化经验为例

在大连市西岗区教育局"新优质学校"项目推进过程中,涌现出大连市71中学和大同小学两所典型学校。这两所学校实现由薄弱到优质的成功经验,对于薄弱学校又快又好发展,推进区域教育均衡发展,促进教育公平,具有启示和借鉴作用。     

Bridging memory-based collaborative filtering and text retrieval

When speaking of information retrieval, we often mean text retrieval. But there exist many other forms of information retrieval applications. A typical example is collaborative filtering that suggests interesting items to a user by taking into account other users’ preferences or tastes. Due to the uniqueness of the problem, it has been modeled and studied differently in the past, mainly drawing from the preference prediction and machine learning view point. A few attempts have yet been made to bring back collaborative filtering to information (text) retrieval modeling and subsequently new interesting collaborative filtering techniques have been thus derived. In this paper, we show that from the algorithmic view point, there is an even closer relationship between collaborative filtering and text retrieval. Specifically, major collaborative filtering algorithms, such as the memory-based, essentially calculate the dot product between the user vector (as the query vector in text retrieval) and the item rating vector (as the document vector in text retrieval). Thus, if we properly structure user preference data and employ the target user’s ratings as query input, major text retrieval algorithms and systems can be directly used without any modification. In this regard, we propose a unified formulation under a common notational framework for memory-based collaborative filtering, and a technique to use any text retrieval weighting function with collaborative filtering preference data. Besides confirming the rationale of the framework, our preliminary experimental results have also demonstrated the effectiveness of the approach in using text retrieval models and systems to perform item ranking tasks in collaborative filtering.     

On Rational Madness: Love and Reason in Socrates and Lacan (Winner of the Taylor & Francis ICA Philosophy of Communication Division Best Paper Award 2008)

Drawing on a close reading of Lacan's Seminar XX: Encore, regarding the idea of love's centrality in every human intersubjective experience, this article explores the artificially constructed division between Eros and Logos that since the Enlightenment pervades most of the cultural renditions of western images of love, and argues that this separation forecloses an overarching unity, put forth by Lacan trough the concept Y a l'Un (there is One).     

New Method for Historic Rammed-earth Wall Characterization: The Almohade Ramparts of Malaga and Seville

ABSTRACT

The goal of this research is to propose a new method of characterizing rammed-earth walls. Based on their historic building materials properties, five broad test groups were established for the characterization: chemical and mineralogical composition, physical properties, mechanical properties, particle size distribution, and dating. These determinations can, in turn, be grouped into two different types: instrumental techniques such as XRF, XRD, and SEM-EDX, as well as adaptations of standard methods (mainly UNE-EN standards) for application to these materials. As case studies where the proposed method is applied, we present our research on the rammed-earth walls in the ramparts of Seville and Malaga (Spain), clearly showing the method’s capacity for comparing and differentiating different rammed-earth walls.     

The Impact of Corporate Media News on Market Valuation

This article explores the influence of Web-based corporate reporting on the investors' valuation of companies in the information and communications technology industry. This study compiled 8,111 news items issued in the “Press Releases” tab of the firms' Web sites between January 2003 and April 2005, and analyzed what type of news items affects stock returns. The results show a positive price reaction to news regarding new customers, completion of acquisitions, strategic long-term decisions, and non-technological alliances. In contrast, the results show a negative price reaction to news regarding the launch of new or upgraded products.     

An annual JCR impact factor calculation based on Bayesian credibility formulas

Our aim deals with appraising the annual impact calculation of journals belonging to the JCR, in terms of the expected citation (with or without selfcitations) by published paper in a range of k-years. A Bayesian approach to the problem, should reflect not only the current prestige of a journal, but also taking into account its recent trajectory. In this wide context, credibility theory becomes an adequate mechanism deciding whether journal's impact factor calculation to be more or less plausible. Under prior belief that journal quality is determined by its impact factor, we model the citation-quality process by choosing a conjugated family of the exponential class in order to obtain a net impact credibility formula. Proposed weighting schema produces the effect of smoothing out any sudden increases or decreases in the year-by-year impact factor.