The 2012 Acquisitions Institute at Timberline Lodge

This year the Acquisitions Institute was held May 19 through May 22, 2012, and brought together approximately eighty people from around the country. Seventeen presentations on acquisitions, collection development, and collection management were delivered over two days, with breaks, meals, and optional fun events providing ample opportunity to socialize and network. Written by a first-time attendee, this article describes the sessions of the 2012 institute.     

ticTOCs: A New Service for “Keeping Current”

ticTOCs, a new journal table of contents service, provides users a free resource for managing RSS feeds for new content from selected journals. This service could be used as a complement and in some cases as an alternative to other table of contents providers. Using RSS feeds provided by publishers, ticTOCs provides an easy-to-use interface for finding, viewing, and saving current tables of contents. The service also provides OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) file exports so that users can incorporate the feeds they find in ticTOCs into a feed reader of their choice.     

Household‐level demand for cable television: A probit analysis.

The authors explore demand for cable services in individual households and find that the quality of over‐the‐air reception, interest in nonprogramming entertainment services, and service quality directly affect that demand. The study also explores demographic and behavioral differences in demand for basic and pay services and outlines their implications for cable systems operators.     

Cable's economic impact on over‐the‐air broadcasting

The author argues that cable industry is having increasingly negative impact on broadcast television as its power in both the programing and advertising markets increase. Cable system operaters are having increasing incentives to drop or refuse to add broadcast stations or to relocate them to less desirable channel locations as a means of improving their performance in the markets. The author warns that current trends could be harmful to many broadcast stations, but he is especially pessimistic about the future of independent UHF stations.     

College Student Success: A Qualitative Modeling Approach

This qualitative study highlighted student perspectives on barriers to success at a community college located in a south Texas city. The study examined barriers to student success, the knowledge that successful students possess to overcome the barriers, and the actions that successful students undertake to overcome the barriers. Padilla's (2004 Padilla , R. V. ( 1999 ). College student retention: Focus on success . Journal of College Student Retention , 1 ( 2 ), 131 – 145 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) theoretical framework and methods for modeling student success provided the conceptual framework for the study. The data analysis resulted in the development of a local student success model and an implementation model for student services at the subject campus.     

Increase of Total Body Water With Decrease of Body Mass While Running 100 km Nonstop—Formation of Edema?

We investigated whether ultraendurance runners in a 100-km run suffer a decrease of body mass and whether this loss consists of fat mass, skeletal muscle mass, or total body water. Male ultrarunners were measured pre- and postrace to determine body mass, fat mass, and skeletal muscle mass by using the anthropometric method. In addition, bioelectrical impedance analysis was used to determine total body water, and urinary (urinary specific gravity) and hematological parameters (hematocrit and plasma sodium) were measured in order to determine hydration status. Body mass decreased by 1.6 kg (p < .01), fat mass by 0.4 kg (p < .01), and skeletal muscle mass by 0.7 kg (p < .01), whereas total body water increased by 0.8 L (p < .05). Hematocrit and plasma sodium decreased significantly (p < .01), whereas plasma urea and urinary specific gravity (USG) increased significantly (p < .01). The decrease of 2.2% body mass and a USG of 1.020 refer to a minimal dehydration. Our athletes seem to have been relatively overhydrated (increase in total body water and plasma sodium) and dehydrated (decrease in body mass and increase in USG) during the race, as evidenced by the increased total body water and the fact that plasma sodium and hematocrit were lower postrace than prerace. The change of body mass was associated with the change of total body water (p < .05), and we presume the development of     

Integrating self-regulation in whole-class reciprocal teaching: A moderator–mediator analysis of incremental effects on fifth graders’ reading comprehension

In this classroom intervention study, reciprocal teaching (RT) of reading strategies was combined with explicit instruction in self-regulated learning (SRL) to promote the reading comprehension of fifth-grade students (N = 306). Twelve intact classes were randomly assigned either to an RT + SRL condition or to an RT condition without explicit instruction in self-regulation. Three additional classes served as a no-treatment comparison group. Strategies instruction was delivered by trained assistants in conventional German language lessons. Students practiced the application of these strategies in small groups. Both at posttest and at maintenance (8 weeks after the intervention), students in the two intervention conditions (RT and RT + SRL) outperformed comparison students in measures of reading comprehension, strategy-related task performance, and self-efficacy for reading. Relative to RT students, students in the RT + SRL condition were better able to maintain training-induced performance gains over the follow-up interval. A moderated mediation analysis revealed that this difference in the sustainability of the two treatments was (a) mediated by the successful mastery of the learned strategies and (b) most evident among students with poor reading fluency skills.     

A path analytic test of the reading strategies mediation model: Relating cognitive competences and motivational influences to individual differences in fifth-grade students' reading comprehension

This study examined a theoretical model hypothesizing that reading strategies mediate the effects of intrinsic reading motivation, reading fluency, and vocabulary knowledge on reading comprehension. Using path analytic methods, we tested the direct and indirect effects specified in the hypothesized model in a sample of 1105 fifth-graders. In addition to standardized tests and questionnaires, we administered a performance test to assess students' proficiency in the application of three reading strategies. The overall fit of the model to the data was good. Both cognitive (fluency and vocabulary) and motivational (intrinsic reading motivation) variables had an indirect effect on reading comprehension through their influence on reading strategies. Reading strategies had a unique effect on reading comprehension and partially mediated the effects that cognitive and motivational variables had on fifth-graders' reading achievements.