Risky business: Students and smartphones

The increase in smartphone adoption has been no less than astounding. Unfortunately, the explosive growth has been accompanied by a rash of security problems. A contributing factor to the growing security problem is a lack of education, training, and awareness. In addition, “bring your own device” (BYOD) policies often leave security responsibilities to the competencies of device owners, which compromises security. Today’s students are tomorrow’s employees with responsibilities for protecting their work environment. They need to understand and practice a full-range of mobile security practices so that they can safely access the information assets of their organizations. If students are not engaging in such practices, educational institutions have a responsibility to ensure that students understand how to keep information assets secure. This paper investigates the smartphone security practices of undergraduate college students. Five hundred students in business classes at a regional public university were surveyed to determine their use of recommended smartphone security practices. The study found that many smartphone users did employ some security measures, but a high percentage of them were ignoring potential risks. This suggests a need for increased education, training, and awareness.     

Conditioned avoidance responses survive contingency degradation in the garden slug,Lehmannia valentiana

Joint presentations of a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US) strengthen the contingency between them, whereas presentations of one stimulus without the other degrade this contingency. For example, the CS can be presented without the US either before conditioning (CS–no US and then CS–US; latent inhibition) or after conditioning (CS–US and then CS–no US; extinction). In vertebrate subjects and several invertebrate species, a time lapse usually results in a return of the conditioned response, or spontaneous recovery. However, in land mollusks, spontaneous recovery from extinction has only recently been reported, and response recovery after latent inhibition has not been reported. In two experiments, using conditioned aversion to a food odor as a measure of learning and memory retention, we observed contingency degradation via latent inhibition (Experiment 1) and extinction (Experiment 2) in the common garden slug, Lehmannia valentiana. In both situations, the contingency degradation procedure successfully attenuated conditioned responding, and delaying testing by several days resulted in recovery of the conditioned response. This suggests that the CS–US association survived the degradation manipulation and was retained over an interval of several days.     

Quality Audits as a Tool for Quality Improvement in Selected European Higher Education Libraries

From the beginning of the 1990s, different types of quality management and evaluation systems have become integrated into higher education institutes throughout Europe due to the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). This has meant that the university libraries have had to learn how to evaluate their services and improve their quality. Quality audits are one tool that can be used in quality management approaches to assess how well an organization is being managed. This paper describes and benchmarks the use of external and internal auditing in three European academic libraries, i.e. the Medical Library of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (Germany), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Library (Spain) and the University of Eastern Finland Library (Finland). The results reveal the best practices of auditing in these institutions; and recommendations are provided for the further development of library auditing and ways to improve co-operation between libraries.     

Do Phonological and Executive Processes in English Learners at Risk for Reading Disabilities in Grade 1 Predict Performance in Grade 2?

This study determined the degree to which the phonological and executive components of memory reflect language‐specific capacities in reading achievement. We tested whether the memory processes in a sample of English‐language learners that played a major role in predicting second‐language acquisition and risk for reading disability (RD) in Grade 1 (Swanson, Sáez, Gerber, & Leafstedt, 2004) also predicted reading performance in Grade 2. The present results showed that Spanish short‐term memory (STM) performance in Grade 1 predicted basic Spanish‐reading skills and Spanish comprehension in Grade 2, whereas Grade 1 English STM performance predicted English vocabulary and English comprehension in Grade 2. More importantly, children at risk for RD in Grade 1 differed from the counterparts in Grade 2 on both English and Spanish measures of reading, whereas their memory deficits were isolated to Spanish STM and working memory (WM). The relationship between language‐specific processes in memory and reading are discussed.     

Somatotype and longevity of former university athletes and nonathletes

A longitudinal study was conducted on 398 athletes and 369 nonathletes who were born before 1920 and attended Michigan State University. The subjects were compared to determine if intercollegiate athletic competition accounts for significant variation in longevity when considered with somatotype. Because some of the subjects were still alive at the time of the study, the BMDP Statistical Software was used to do a survival analysis with covariates. Preliminary comparisons considered the differences in somatotype between athletes and nonathletes. Two sample t-tests indicated that athletes were more mesomorphic and less ectomorphic (p less than .05) than nonathletes. When comparing the relationship between somatotype and longevity, the pooled data of athletes and nonathletes indicated that endomorphs were shorter lived than the other three comparison groups. When only the athletes were considered, similar results were found. However, the nonathlete group exhibited differences only between the mesomorphic and endomorphic groups. The endomorphs were shorter lived. Longevity was examined by using the Cox proportional hazards regression method with somatotype and athlete/nonathlete status as covariates. Somatotype, by itself, was found to be significantly related to longevity, (p less than .001). Athletic status was not significantly related to longevity, either by itself or when entered into the model with somatotype.     

A causal analysis relating previous achievement,attitudes, discourse,and intervention to achievement in biology and chemistry

This study described the relationship of 38 variates to achievement in high school biology and chemistry classes. Forty-four teachers prepared audio tape recordings of discussions throughout a nine-month period. Equal-sized groups received treatment consisting of wait time feedback and/or supportive intervention, a form of peer coaching. Other variables were initial measures, which included the variates of class size and previous science grade, pre- and posttest scores on student attitudes and perceptions, and prediscourse and discourse analyses, which included the variates of wait times, actions, and response durations. While previous research has shown that wait time feedback and supportive intervention are effective means of changing teacher behavior, the results of the present study revealed that previous student achievement and the attitudes of students accounted for 70% of the variation in the final examination scores (New York State Regents) on the basis of only the first three weeks of data collection on the variables assessed. Generally, little emphasis on higher-level thinking, wait time, or problem solving was found at the beginning of the school year, and only minimal changes resulted from the application of the treatment variables. Pressures for content coverage and preparation for externally imposed statewide examinations that emphasize memory-level learning augured against the changes that the independent variables were designed to produce.     

Methods for documenting historical agro-industrial buildings: a comparative study and a simple photogrammetric method

As an important element in the cultural heritage of a people, traditional rural constructions need to be conserved over time. Graphic and metric documentation methods play a key role in the preservation of cultural heritage. In this paper different existing methods of graphic and metric documentation are analysed in order to select the most suitable for the documentation of agro-industrial buildings according to their characteristics. The selected one is a simple close-range photogrammetry method, which is affordable and easy to understand for non experts. It is based on the use of plumb lines, a conventional digital camera and monoscopic restitution. The application of the method is illustrated in a particular case consisting on the graphic and metric documentation of a windmill. Also the accuracy of the method is evaluated in this particular case.