Theories for teacher selection: Objective, subjective, and critical contact

Decisions made by applicants for teaching positions have generally been ignored by most teacher selection research. The purpose of this study is to obtain additional information about the teacher as a decision-maker. Contents of recruitment interviews were varied via video tape to reflect the salient factors associated with the objective, subjective, and critical contact theories. The reactions of teachers to these manipulations were assessed in a laboratory study. Teachers were more positive when the recruitment interview stressed nonpecuniary aspects of the work environment (subjective theory) than when the recruitment interview stressed either economic incentives offered by a local school district (objective theory) or specific information about the work itself (critical contact theory).     

The effect of towing a range of relative resistances on sprint performance

The aim of this study was to compare sprint performance over 10 and 20 m when participants ran while towing resistances, weighing between 0 and 30% of body mass. The sample of 33 participants consisted of male rugby and soccer players (age 21.1 +/- 1.8 years, body mass 83.6 +/- 13.1 kg, height 1.82 +/- 0.1 m; mean +/- s). Each participant performed two sets of seven sprints over 20 m using a Latin rectangular design. The times were recorded at 10 and 20 m using electronic speed gates. The sprints of 13 players were video-recorded to allow calculation of stride length and frequency. For both sprints, a quadratic relationship was observed between sprint time and resistance as sprint time increased from 2.94 s to 3.80 s from 0 to 30% resistance. This relationship was statistically significant but considered not to be meaningful for performance because, over the range of resistances used in this study, the quadratic model was never more than 1% (in terms of sprint time) from the linear model. As resistance increased, the stride length shortened, with mean values of 1.63 +/- 0.13 m at 0% body mass and 1.33 +/- 0.13 m at 30% of body mass. There was no significant change in stride frequency with increasing resistance. The results show that in general there is an increase in sprint time with an increase in resistance. No particular resistance in the range tested (0 - 30%) can be recommended for practice.     

Semantic-Syntactic Analysis for Question Answering and Definition Extraction

This paper studies the contribution of semantic and semantic–syntactic analysis to the effectiveness of solving applied text-processing tasks: question answering and extraction of definitions from scientific publications. Methods for solving these problems, which, in addition to morphological and syntactic structures, also use semantic structures of texts, are presented. We carried out the experimental evaluation of these methods and comparison of two approaches to syntactic and semantic analysis: separate and joint semantic–syntactic parsing.     

Computability via Cellular Automata

This review addresses the issues of computations using cellular automata (CA). It is shown that the generality of the connectionism paradigm allows some methods applicable to neural networks to be transferred into the domain of CA. Some special issues of computability are discussed based on the examples of the density classification task, the firing-squad synchronization problem, and the queen-bee problem, as well as sorting algorithms and Atrubin’s parallel multiplication algorithm.     

What is Open Access Button? An interview with Joe McArthur

Articles published behind a paywall in commercial journals are often inaccessible to potential readers who are not affiliated with a subscribing institution. Open Access Button is an application that assists readers in finding Open Access versions of such articles. This service works in a completely legal fashion. This interview is with one of the co-founders of the service, Joe McArthur. Open Access Button is supported by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.     

Academic Writing and Publishing: A NASIG Preconference Workshop

ABSTRACT

The goal of this preconference was to guide aspiring academic librarians in understanding how to navigate scholarly publication requirements and be successful academic writers. The presenters provided tips for beginners as well as for those already engaged in a research agenda. One of the presenters is a published book and journal author and the other is the editor-in-chief of a major peer-reviewed library journal.