Equilibrium and duality in electromagnetic field problems

Electromagnetic fields can be treated as systems in which the field equations are the equations of equilibrium. This formulation draws the subject into the unified approach of mechanics. Close analogies to potential and kinetic energy exist and these can be used to provide double bounds to the electromagnetic energy.     

Career Centers and Needs Assessments: Getting the Information You Need to Increase Your Success

Career Centers are experiencing increasing demands to justify the cost of their services, document the effectiveness of their services, increase their use of technology, and provide a broader range of services. Given the limited personnel and funding associated with most Career Centers, and it can seem like an overwhelming set of demands to respond to. This article explores the use of the needs assessment as a tool to provide evidence of effectiveness, justify costs, and make effective decisions about the services they provide. This article will discuss the benefits of conducting a needs assessment, the process of developing and implementing a needs assessment using an needs assessment project conducted at a small, mid-western University.     

The moderating capacity of racial identity between perceived discrimination and psychological well-being over time among African American youth

This study examined the influence of racial identity in the longitudinal relation between perceptions of racial discrimination and psychological well-being for approximately 560 African American youth. Latent curve modeling (LCM) and parallel process multiple-indicator LCMs with latent moderators were used to assess whether perceptions of racial discrimination predicted the intercept (initial levels) and the slope (rate of change) of psychological well-being over time, and whether racial identity moderates these relations. The results indicated that African American adolescents who reported higher psychological responses to discrimination frequency levels at the first time point had lower initial levels of well-being. Regressing the slope factor for psychological well-being on the frequency of discrimination also revealed a nonsignificant result for subsequent well-being levels.     

Notes from California: an anthropological approach to urban science education for language minority families

This article describes a unique and ongoing collaboration involving a team of bilingual/multicultural teacher‐educators, preservice teachers, teachers, students, and community members in an urban California elementary school. According to the model this team employed, children, teachers, and student teachers gather community “funds of knowledge” about the science to be studied in a classroom, then incorporate this knowledge by using parents as experts and by creating community books. In this model community‐generated materials parallel and complement standards‐based curricula, although science topics that have natural significance in particular communities are used as a starting point. Using critical ethnography as a framework, the article focuses on a particular experience—the building of a Mien–American garden house—to show how, by drawing on participants' funds of knowledge, a new kind of multiscience can emerge, one accessible to all collaborating members and responsive to school standards. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 983–999, 2001     

Assessing scientific performance

A method for assessing scientific performance is proposed and illustrated. Advantages over existing methods are: (1) increased objectivity; (2) increased emphasis on what was rather than who contributed; and (3) increased accuracy in theme identification. The procedure is based on relationships displayed numerically in the published documents. These relationships are extracted and organized as a graphic display representing the conceptual structure for a subject. Individuals or groups contributing to the knowledge of the discipline can be identified. The extent of their contributions also can be documented.The method is illustrated using published documents in Pediatric Oncology for the period 1979–1982. The contributions of a major clinical investigations group, the Childrens Cancer Study Group, are analyzed. The results show increasing contributions by the Group as the conceptual structure changes from the simplest measure of survival to ones requiring sophisticated follow-up and clinical evaluation procedures.