GIFTED YOUTHS’ SCHOLASTIC AND OCCUPATIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS

A longitudinal study between 1970 and 1988 of scholastic and occupational achievements of intellectually gifted youths from the Sisak‐Banija region (SR Croatia, Yugoslavia) had four stages: (1) identification (organized during the final classes of the primary school period), (2) first phase of follow up (monitored during the period of secondary school education), (3) second phase of follow up (monitored during the period of higher education), (4) third phase of follow up (monitored during the first few years of employment). Results until now show that the intellectual status of subjects has remained constantly high; all subjects completed secondary school education and 67 percent continued their studies; a high proportion of them were oriented to engineering and science; they attained much higher levels of school achievement than average; many of them were interested in scientific research and different activities in arts and sport; many of them published their works. However, the study has drawn attention to negative consequences of the absence of a social support system for gifted youth in our country.     

Using Technological Attributes to Study Online Media: The Case of User-Generated Content

This study offers empirical evidence of Mix-of-Attributes (MOA) approach's analytical benefits, and illustrates how the MOA approach can be utilized. The study begins by content analyzing the most popular Web sites containing political user-generated content (UGC) and documenting presence of search efficiency, customizability, manipulability, participation cost reduction, and community orientation technological attributes. A cluster analysis is then used to develop classification of political UGC Web sites based on their attribute scores. The conventional and the attribute-based classifications of UGC are shown to be different, providing evidence of the MOA approach's usefulness. Theory-building implications of the attributes, the attribute-based classification, and the MOA approach are discussed.     

Policy change in higher education: the New Zealand experience

For over one hundred years, the structure of the New Zealand education system has been basically stable. After re-election in 1987, however, the Labour government initiated a major reform of the system, from early childhood to tertiary. Although the pace of change has been great, most of the changes are only recently in place or, in the case of the tertiary sector, not yet fully operative. It is, then, too early to assess the consequences of the changes except rather intuitively. Nevertheless, this is an opportune moment to begin to document and analyze the changes in the tertiary sector.     

苏联现代高等学校图书馆

<正> 目前苏联全国共有高等学校891所(其中综合性大学68所),在校学生人数已超过600万.这些高等学校分布于200多座城市.在高等学校的教学和科学研究活动中,图书馆起着重要的作用.图书馆工作的主要方向是积极参与教学过程,及时为学生提供必需的图书文献,为科学研究提供高效率的、全面的情报服务.因此,今日的高校图书馆已看作是同时执行公共图书馆、科学图书馆和学校图书馆多种职能的复合体.     

Probabilistic topic modeling in multilingual settings: An overview of its methodology and applications

Probabilistic topic models are unsupervised generative models which model document content as a two-step generation process, that is, documents are observed as mixtures of latent concepts or topics, while topics are probability distributions over vocabulary words. Recently, a significant research effort has been invested into transferring the probabilistic topic modeling concept from monolingual to multilingual settings. Novel topic models have been designed to work with parallel and comparable texts. We define multilingual probabilistic topic modeling (MuPTM) and present the first full overview of the current research, methodology, advantages and limitations in MuPTM. As a representative example, we choose a natural extension of the omnipresent LDA model to multilingual settings called bilingual LDA (BiLDA). We provide a thorough overview of this representative multilingual model from its high-level modeling assumptions down to its mathematical foundations. We demonstrate how to use the data representation by means of output sets of (i) per-topic word distributions and (ii) per-document topic distributions coming from a multilingual probabilistic topic model in various real-life cross-lingual tasks involving different languages, without any external language pair dependent translation resource: (1) cross-lingual event-centered news clustering, (2) cross-lingual document classification, (3) cross-lingual semantic similarity, and (4) cross-lingual information retrieval. We also briefly review several other applications present in the relevant literature, and introduce and illustrate two related modeling concepts: topic smoothing and topic pruning. In summary, this article encompasses the current research in multilingual probabilistic topic modeling. By presenting a series of potential applications, we reveal the importance of the language-independent and language pair independent data representations by means of MuPTM. We provide clear directions for future research in the field by providing a systematic overview of how to link and transfer aspect knowledge across corpora written in different languages via the shared space of latent cross-lingual topics, that is, how to effectively employ learned per-topic word distributions and per-document topic distributions of any multilingual probabilistic topic model in various cross-lingual applications.     

Development of terminological resources for expert knowledge: a case study in mining

In this paper we outline an approach to application of ontology in knowledge management. The University of Belgrade Faculty of Mining and Geology research team has developed a terminological resource to support knowledge management in mining engineering. Mining engineering, like all other engineering disciplines, needs comprehensive, consistent and standardized definitions of terms for efficient knowledge management and interoperability among various related IT applications. This goal can best be reached by terminological resources in electronic form organized as thesauruses or ontologies. The resource used to illustrate this approach, RudOnto, is a system of ontologies developed for mining engineering and their application in mining equipment and mine safety domains. Key benefits of applying ontologies in knowledge management, aside from securing interoperability, are enhancement of browsing/searching functions, and reuse and structuring capabilities. Through export to several specific formats, RudOnto ontologies offer the possibility of generating stand-alone terminological resources or ontologies in specific sub-fields, such as mining equipment, mine safety and geostatistics.     

A plea for research on lay literacy

This paper distinguishes scribal literacy, the ability to read and write, from lay literacy, the pervasive set of assumptions taken for granted by readers and non-readers who participate in a literate society. The task for the study of literacy is to uncover and examine these assumptions. The route to the discovery of these literate assumptions is through a consideration of the relations between the vernacular and the literate forms of language.     

Best-bet channels for integrated soil fertility management communication and dissemination along the agricultural product value-chain: a comparison of northern Ghana and western Kenya

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to comparatively assess the most suitable channels for dissemination of agricultural innovations along the entire information value chain.

Design/Methodology/Approach: We calculated information scores to measure channel preference from a randomly selected sample of farmers: 285 in Tamale, Ghana and 300 in Kakamega, Kenya. Using t-tests we compared the information score differences of different channels between farmers who adopted Integrated Soil Fertility Management and those who did not.

Findings: The highest information scores were observed for radio along the entire value chain for both locations. However, farmers in Tamale prefered interpersonal channels for processing information. Radio and farmer field days had the highest rankings for production information at both locations. Radio, workshops and interpersonal channels (traders and neighbours/friends/relatives) were best-bet channels for marketing and procesing information.

Practical implication: Extension agents should place more emphasis on channels such as radio, farmer field days, and workshops as they may offer more efficient delivery of information packages at all levels, whilst recognizing the central role of interpersonal channels.

Theoretical implication: The nexus between the uses and gratification, adoption, diffusion of innovations theories and the collaborative communication theory on one hand, and the agricultural product value chain framework on the other, is highlighted. Farmers’ preference for information channels is not predicated on the stage of the value chain.

Originality/Value: In the current context of weak agricultural knowledge and innovation systems in African agriculture, agricultural producers are poorly informed about the current innovations. This study furnishes empirical evidence on the best-bet information channels to be used by extension workers and change agents to disseminate and communicate system innovations.