The Bottom Line for Education and Training

Because business and industry training has become a major economic investment for the companies that support it, training managers are increasingly called upon to demonstrate that their interventions are not only effective but also cost-effective. This article describes a cost-effective methodology. It points out how cost-effectiveness differs from cost-benefit analysis. The technique combines meta-analytic and simple accounting procedures to yield an index of relative cost-effectiveness of training interventions. Using examples from the schools and corporate training, the authors demonstrate how the analysis can be applied to a large variety of training situations.     

ABSTRACT at the Least (Reviews of Data-Based Studies of a Whimsical Nature)

One aspect of human resources development in which performance technologists are frequently involved is the establishment of selection procedures and criteria. There is a trend toward increased use of standardized tests in the selection process. A performance technologist might be involved in the selection of, or development of, tests for screening of applicants. Alex L. Chew and John D. Morris in their article “Investigation of the Lollipop Test as a Pre-Kindergarten Screening Instrument” provide a useful review of validation procedures.     

Intersectional agencies: Navigating predominantly White institutions as an administrator of color

Administrators of color in predominantly White institutions (PWI) navigate from dual positions of privilege and marginalization. Within PWIs, administrators of color experience marginalization in terms of their racial/ethnic makeup. Specifically focusing on the administrative level, 95.8% of executive provosts and 86.2% of deans of academic colleges are White. At the faculty level, nearly 10% of full professors are people of color. However, even with such exclusionary practices, 87.7% of chief diversity officers are racial minorities. The current study seeks to understand how highly educated administrators of color work for diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives while navigating from their dual positions of marginalization and privilege. Using the theoretical lenses of co-cultural theory, dominant group theory, and intersectionality, the study seeks to understand how privilege and marginalization ebbs and flows depending on particular contexts. Findings indicate that optimizing privilege through co-cultural praxis and impeding through mentoring are two common strategies used by administrators of color.     

Cultured meat and cowless milk: on making markets for animal-free food

According to its proponents, animal-free animal food products, such as cultured meat and synthetic cow’s milk, have the potential to overcome various environmental, health and ethical challenges that have emerged around global animal product consumption and the industrial agriculture that is needed to support it. Apart from the myriad of technical problems making animal-free food products, critics have pointed out the blurry ontological status of the food and the ethical challenges therein, and have questioned the veracity of the various promissory narratives being produced. This paper considers animal-free food from a social studies of economies and markets (SSEM) perspective. As a market that currently mostly only exists in potential, an SSEM perspective can reveal the various social and material relations that comprise the (bio)capital formation that will underpin any market-to-be, an aspect of markets that are often invisible once markets are up and running. Moreover, this perspective details the intimate role markets have in establishing the ethical and ontological aspects of animal-free foods in a political economy shaped by neoliberalisation and financialisation.     

Humility & Humiliation: The Transformation of Franciscan Humour,c.1210–1310

Humiliation and self-ridicule worked as surprisingly important tools of evangelical outreach in the first decades of the Franciscan Order (c.1210–50). According to early Franciscan texts such as the Assisi Compilation (c.1240s) and Jordan of Giano’s Chronica (c.1260), St Francis and his earliest followers sought to win supporters by stripping naked in public, mocking learned preachers and ludicrously imitating animals. Yet within a few decades of the founder’s death this type of humour had been erased from Franciscan texts. Chronicles now omitted references to Francis’s laughter, while humiliating behaviour came to be condemned by Franciscan preachers, chroniclers and theologians alike. From being a means of undermining dignity and reason, joking was now instead celebrated as a tool of upholding these very same values. Describing the nature of this shift, and contextualising it within the evolving institutional priorities of the Franciscans under the leadership of Bonaventure (d.1274), this article will complicate debates about the development of medieval humour, while also reflecting on laughter’s role as a means of resistance to the significant social and cultural upheavals of the 1200s.     

Providing access to the 1990 U.S. census maps.

"The U.S. Bureau of the Census has published on CD-ROM format data for the smallest geographic reporting levels....Providing access to the maps that define the reporting areas used by the Bureau within a county is one aspect of service that is unique to census files STF1A, STF1B, and STF3A. The paper illustrates the way these reporting levels are defined in the Tract/BNA Maps and Block Maps. The steps taken by one library to develop a link between a geographic area of interest to a patron and the areas defined on these maps are described. These steps include preserving and housing the maps in a way that makes them easy to use and preparing an index to the information contained on the maps using dBASE registered trademark software and information taken from STF1A using Extract software."     

“Stop sending your kids across our border:” Discursively constructing the unaccompanied youth migrant

The recent migration of 65,000 children across the southwestern border, coupled with allegations of abuse by the U.S. Border Patrol, enables the investigation of an overlooked immigrant category: the unaccompanied youth migrant. Analyzing audience responses to news reports of the abuse, we find that established disparaging immigrant tropes apply, describing the children as an economic burden, disease carriers, and offspring of irresponsible families. We uncover two new themes: Youth migrants are channels whereby criminals may infiltrate the U.S., and manipulate legal authorities to remain in the U.S. Finally, we demonstrate how global compassion is strategically deployed to qualify harsh retaliatory measures.     

A scale-based approach to interdisciplinary research and expertise in sports

After more than 20 years since the introduction of ecological and dynamical approaches in sports research, their promising opportunity for interdisciplinary research has not been fulfilled yet. The complexity of the research process and the theoretical and empirical difficulties associated with an integrated ecological-dynamical approach have been the major factors hindering the generalisation of interdisciplinary projects in sports sciences. To facilitate this generalisation, we integrate the major concepts from the ecological and dynamical approaches to study behaviour as a multi-scale process. Our integration gravitates around the distinction between functional (ecological) and execution (organic) scales, and their reciprocal intra- and inter-scale constraints. We propose an (epistemological) scale-based definition of constraints that accounts for the concept of synergies as emergent coordinative structures. To illustrate how we can operationalise the notion of multi-scale synergies we use an interdisciplinary model of locomotor pointing. To conclude, we show the value of this approach for interdisciplinary research in sport sciences, as we discuss two examples of task-specific dimensionality reduction techniques in the context of an ongoing project that aims to unveil the determinants of expertise in basketball free throw shooting. These techniques provide relevant empirical evidence to help bootstrap the challenging modelling efforts required in sport sciences.     

Effects of heat acclimation on hand cooling efficacy following exercise in the heat

This study examined the separate and combined effects of heat acclimation and hand cooling on post-exercise cooling rates following bouts of exercise in the heat. Seventeen non-heat acclimated (NHA) males (mean ± SE; age, 23 ± 1 y; mass, 75.30 ± 2.27 kg; maximal oxygen consumption [VO₂ max], 54.1 ± 1.3 ml·kg^?1·min^?1) completed 2 heat stress tests (HST) when NHA, then 10 days of heat acclimation, then 2 HST once heat acclimated (HA) in an environmental chamber (40°C; 40%RH). HSTs were 2 60-min bouts of treadmill exercise (45% VO₂ max; 2% grade) each followed by 10 min of hand cooling (C) or no cooling (NC). Heat acclimation sessions were 90–240 min of treadmill or stationary bike exercise (60–80% VO₂ max). Repeated measures ANOVA with Fishers LSD post hoc (α < 0.05) identified differences. When NHA, C (0.020 ± 0.003°C·min^?1) had a greater cooling rate than NC (0.013 ± 0.003°C·min^?1) (mean difference [95%CI]; 0.007°C [0.001,0.013], P = 0.035). Once HA, C (0.021 ± 0.002°C·min^?1) was similar to NC (0.025 ± 0.002°C·min^?1) (0.004°C [?0.003,0.011], P = 0.216). Hand cooling when HA (0.021 ± 0.002°C·min^?1) was similar to when NHA (0.020 ± 0.003°C·min^?1) (P = 0.77). In conclusion, when NHA, C provided greater cooling rates than NC. Once HA, C and NC provided similar cooling rates.