Impacts of performance-based accountability on institutional performance in the U.S.

In the 1990s, most US states adopted new forms of performance-based accountability, e.g., performance-based budgeting, funding, or reporting. This study analyzed changes in institutional performance following the adoption of these new accountability standards. We measured institutional performance by representative education and research indicators—graduation rates and levels of federal research funding. We collected data from 1997 to 2007 and used a hierarchical linear modeling growth curve analysis. The main finding was that states which adopted performance-based accountability did not see a noticeable increase in institutional performance. In addition, we highlighted a critical policy issue—whether state and institutional factors contribute most to institutional performance in higher education.     

Decolonizing educational/curriculum studies in East Asia: problematizing shadow education in South Korea

This essay review critically engages Young Chun Kim's book, Shadow Education and the Curriculum and Culture of Schooling in South Korea, by responding to two central questions at its heart: What does decolonization of educational research mean and what does it look like? In what way can cultural studies of countries with histories of colonized educational systems challenge the inertia to recapitulate colonized historical consciousness? Kim provides theoretical and empirical foundations for generating intellectual space that reveals the dialectical relationship between the dominant modes of discourse in educational research and aspirations of the colonized to envision their own educational culture and history.     

Ontological framework based on contextual mediation for collaborative information retrieval

On the heterogeneous web information spaces, users have been suffering from efficiently searching for relevant information. This paper proposes a mediator agent system to estimate the semantics of unknown web spaces by learning the fragments gathered during the users' focused crawling. This process is organized as the following three tasks; (i) gathering semantic information about web spaces from personal agents while focused crawling in unknown spaces, (ii) reorganizing the information by using ontology alignment algorithm, and (iii) providing relevant semantic information to personal agents right before focused crawling. It makes the personal agent possible to recognize the corresponding user's behaviors in semantically heterogeneous spaces and predict his searching contexts. For the experiments, we implemented comparison-shopping system with heterogeneous web spaces. As a result, our proposed method efficiently supported the users, and then, network traffic was also reduced. An erratum to this article can be found at     

The Relationship Between Activities of Daily Living (ADL), Chronic Diseases,and Depression Among Older Korean Immigrants

It has been identified that performance of Activities of Daily living (ADL) and chronic disease are predictors of depression for older Asian immigrants. This study examined the independent and interactive effects of ADL performance and chronic disease on depressive symptoms among older Korean immigrants. Data from 210 older Korean immigrants in Los Angeles County were analyzed. Self-reported measures included sociodemographic characteristics, ADL performance, chronic disease, and depressive symptoms. A hierarchical regression model indicated that performance of activities of daily living were negatively associated with depressive symptoms. Also, older Korean immigrants with more chronic diseases were more likely to have depressive symptoms. The interaction between ADL performance and chronic diseases was significantly associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms (β = .46, p < .05). Findings suggest that it is critical to develop various strategies for enhancing immigrants’ ability to perform activities of daily living; this can lead to increased independence and reduced chronic illnesses, thus, improving overall quality of life.     

基于专利演化模型的机构专利分析

近年来,科学技术发展日新月异,每天都会出现各种新型研究领域,众多研究成果被发表与公布。为此,来自各个国家的组织机构做了巨大的努力要为自己的机构带来外部与内部的变化。事实上,对于很多机构来说,研究的意义在于通过分析研究成果得到有意义的结论。因此,本文通过对具体机制下的专利标题（发明名称）进行分析从而提出一种演化模型。首先,我们根据关键词的特性对标题的关键词进行分类,然后定义专利的相互关系。我们建议演化模型的相互关系建立在时间轴基础上,并且可以适用于实际数据。通过应用于实际数据的模型可预测出未来专利的关键词。     

Parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of standards-based and traditional report cards

The purpose of this study was to determine parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of standards-based and traditional report cards. Participants included 115 parents/guardians of students from a single, midsize school district that had implemented a standards-based report card. During the first two marking periods, all parents/guardians received both a traditional report card in which teachers assigned a single overall grade for each subject and a standards-based report card that included marks for individual standards within subjects. After midyear, parents were asked to complete a survey that asked which form they preferred and the reasons for their preference. Three hundred and eighty three teachers from two nearby midsize school districts considering the adoption of the same standards-based report card completed a similar survey. Parents overwhelmingly preferred the standards-based form. The teachers considering the adoption of a standards based report card were positive overall, but significantly less than the parents who had received them.     

Drop-to-drop liquid–liquid extraction of DNA in an electrowetting-on-dielectric digital microfluidics

Recent advancements in microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip technologies enabled miniaturization and automation of many downstream nucleic acid analysis steps such as PCR. However, DNA extraction/isolation protocol remains a stand-alone sample preparation step. For a quick sample-to-result solution, downstream protocols and sample preparation protocols need to be seamlessly integrated into a single lab-on-a-chip platform. As a step toward such integration, this paper introduces microfluidic DNA isolation using the liquid–liquid extraction (LLE) method in the drop-to-drop (DTD) format. The electrowetting-on-dielectric digital microfluidic platform is capable of handling a two-phase liquid system easily, which enables DTD LLE. In this study, the extraction of plasmid DNA (pDNA) from an aqueous sample to an ionic liquid is demonstrated. Prior to pDNA extraction study, the DTD LLE protocol was developed and optimized using organic dyes as solutes. The selective extraction of pDNA in the presence of proteins as interfering molecules is also demonstrated. This work implies that DTD LLE can substitute for magnetic beads steps in standard DNA isolation protocols.