Identifying and analyzing touchpoints for building a higher education brand

In today's instantly interconnected world, sectors like higher education, which were once considered safe havens, are now being exposed to competitive forces. Education is an experiential service where the active involvement of both the service provider (higher education brand) and the consumer (student) is important. This research paper identifies 13 influencing touchpoints during the various stages of the educational journey – pre-admission stage, course stage and post-passing as alumnus stage.     

How Well Socially Wary Preschoolers Fare Over Time Depends on Their Parasympathetic Regulation and Socialization

Parasympathetic regulation and maternal overprotective parenting were examined in 101 children as moderators of links between preschool (M = 3.53 years) social wariness and childhood (M = 9.07 years) internalizing and anxiety problems, social skills, and scholastic performance. Across these three domains of functioning, more socially wary children were likely to manifest worse adjustment when they had low respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) or highly overprotective mothers. Conversely, maternal overprotection appeared to confer benefits for preschoolers with low wariness and low RSA. These findings point to the importance of both internal self‐regulatory capacities and external support for autonomy and competence to understand and assist socially wary children and their families.     

‘To Give an Example is a Complex Act’: Agamben’s pedagogy of the paradigm

Abstract

Agamben’s notion of the ‘paradigm’ has far-reaching implications for educational thinking, curriculum design and pedagogical conduct. In his approach, examples—or paradigms—deeply engage our powers of analogy, enabling us to discern previously unseen affinities among singular objects by stepping outside established systems of classification. In this way we come to envision novel groupings, new patterns of connection—that nonetheless do not simply reassemble those singular objects into yet another rigidly fixed set or class. Agamben sees this sort of ‘paradigmatic understanding’ as our richest source of intelligibility. For Agamben the paradigm is ultimately about learning to see again, starting not with already perfectly known and categorized objects (or ideas), but rather with a fresh experience of one individual object and the analogical relations it may have to others, and to novel groupings that may arise. The paradigm is a method, a way in which educators might respond to a wide range of educational challenges. For a paradigmatic relation suspends while exposing, deactivates while revealing, complicates while clarifying. But articulating the enigmatic paradigmatic relation between example and class is far more than a method. It is epistemological (a way of knowing and conception of knowledge), ethical (a fostering of freedom from presupposed categories and reified principles) and ontological (a type of being that exposes the potential of knowing and communicating—their intelligibility and communicability). In these qualities, paradigms exhibit to educators a free, a new use of singularities.     

School educational project as a criterion of school choice: discourses and practices in the city of Barcelona

In its advancement towards an education quasi-market, Catalonia has recently been driving the development of school educational projects in all schools (both public and private) as a tool to facilitate school autonomy and family choices. A school educational project is a formal document in which schools identify their pedagogical goals, missions and orientations, their academic resources and organisational structures. Through the analysis of 60 in-depth interviews with parents of children at the age of commencing universal pre-primary education (three years old) and data collected from surveys completed by a representative sample made up of 3245 families, this article explores the impact of this policy on discourses and practices of school choice amongst families in the city of Barcelona. On the one hand, we observe that interest in educational projects has penetrated the discourses of the most educated parents, even though, at the same time, we detect a generalised lack of knowledge of the content of such projects. On the other hand, we note that the social composition of schools is still a prominent factor in choice practices. Such findings question the ideal of the autonomous and rational citizen-consumer that underlies the policy of establishing educational projects.     

Funding and Focus: Resource Dependence in Public Higher Education

Utilizing resource dependence theory, this study investigates the relationship between institutional reliance on net tuition dollars as a source of revenue and institutional expenditures for education and related activities at public, four-year institutions of higher education in the United States. Drawing on an 11-year panel of university-level data and utilizing an instrumental variables approach which acknowledges the potential endogeneity of institutional revenue structure, I find that institutional expenditures are quite responsive to changes in revenue patterns. This is a finding that is discussed within the context of the longstanding trend of decreased state support for public higher education, as well as the increasing popularity of market-oriented approaches to the management of public higher education systems observed in the United States and abroad.     

In a daily time–place learning task,time is only used as a discriminative stimulus if each daily session is associated with a distinct spatial location

It is difficult for rats to acquire daily time–place (TP) learning tasks. One theory suggests that rats do not use time of day as a stimulus signaling a specific response. In the present study, we tested rats’ ability to use time of day as a discriminative stimulus. A fixed-interval procedure was used in which one lever provided reinforcement on a FI-5-s schedule in morning sessions, and the same lever provided reinforcement on a FI-30-s schedule in afternoon sessions. Because only one place was used in this paradigm, the rats could only use time of day to acquire the task. Mean responses during the first 5 s of the first trial in each session indicated that the rats did not discriminate between the two sessions. In Phase II, a different lever location was used for each of the two daily sessions, which meant that both spatial and temporal information could be used to acquire the task. The rats readily acquired the task in this phase, and probe trials indicated that the rats were using a combination of spatial and temporal information to discriminate between the two different trial types. When the spatial cue was removed in Phase III, rats no longer discriminated the two sessions, suggesting that time can only be used as a discriminative stimulus when each daily session is associated with a distinct spatial location.     

Gelatin‐Filtered Consommé: A Practical Demonstration of the Freezing and Thawing Processes

ABSTRACT: Freezing is a key food processing and preservation technique widely used in the food industry. Application of best freezing and storage practices extends the shelf‐life of foods for several months, while retaining much of the original quality of the fresh food. During freezing, as well as its counterpart process, thawing, a number of critical physiochemical processes take place, including freeze concentration and freezing‐point depression. As a start to understanding the complexities associated with frozen foods, Food Science students should be able to describe and explain what occurs during the freezing and thawing of an aqueous solution. A modern cooking technique, gelatin‐filtered consommé, illustrates all of the phenomena associated with the freezing and thawing processes in a memorable, edible, hands‐on fashion.     

Health benefits of hard martial arts in adults: a systematic review

Participation in organized sports is promoted as a means of increasing physical activity levels and reducing chronic disease risk in adults. Hard martial arts practice (i.e. using body contact techniques), has gained in popularity over time. This review explores the evidence for health benefits of “hard” martial arts practice within the adult population. A systematic electronic database search was conducted, and quality assessments applied the Effective Public Health Practice Project tool. Twenty-eight studies met the inclusion criteria, examining balance, cognitive function, muscular skeletal status, psychological, cardiovascular fitness, and metabolic effects. The majority of studies reported positive effects resulting from hard martial arts practice, showing some improvement and maintenance of balance, cognitive function and psychological health. Benefits may be obtained regardless of the age of practice commencement. However, quality of the evidence is affected by methodological weaknesses across the studies. “Hard” martial arts seem to have potential to improve balance and cognitive functions that decline with age, which can lead to poorer health outcomes among the elderly (e.g. cognitive decline, falls and fractures). Benefits should be further investigated with improved intervention studies, representative samples and longer follow-up periods in order to establish associations with morbidity and mortality in the long term.     

Serum Lipid Alterations in Early Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients on Disease Modifying Anti Rheumatoid Therapy

Dyslipidaemia is a major CVD risk factor in the general population. Current evidence suggests that lipid metabolism is altered in RA due to inflammation, and that use of anti-inflammatory therapy may reverse some of these changes. The objective of our study is to compare the effect of treatment with DMARD on lipid fractions after 6 months of therapy. Forty patients who met the American College of Rheumatology, ACR/EULAR criteria for rheumatoid arthritis, with disease duration of less than 1 year and no prior treatment were included in the study. Thirty healthy volunteers were included as controls. The mean DAS-28 at disease onset was 5.15 ± 1.3. Early Rheumatoid Arthritis (ERA) patients exhibited higher serum levels of total cholesterol (TC) and lowdensity lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and lower serum high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels compared to controls. As a consequence, the atherogenic index of plasma [log (TG/HDL-C)], the atherogenic indices: TC/HDL-C as well as LDLC/HDL-C was significantly higher in ERA patients compared to controls. After 6 months of treatment, there was significant reduction of the DAS 28, HDL-C and Apo A-I improved and Lp(a) decreased significantly. All lipid ratios improved, a phenomenon primarily due to the increase in serum HDL-C levels. These changes were inversely correlated with CRP and ESR. In conclusion, ERA patients are characterized by an atherogenic lipid profile, which improves with DMARD therapy.