The Effects of Children's Age and Sex on Acquiring Pro-Environmental Attitudes Through Environmental Education

Environmental education programs aiming to enhance children's environmental attitudes in a pro-environmental direction require background information, such as age and sex differences, to ensure appropriate design. We used the 2-MEV model with its domains preservation and utilization of nature to assess a four-day program at an educational field center with students 9–10 and 11–13 years of age. A pre- and post-retention test design revealed younger students to be more responsive concerning positive attitude shifts than older students, whereas the sexes were equally influenced. Program developers should consider that education has a stronger effect on young children's environmental attitudes.     

Bimodal bilingual language development of hearing children of deaf parents

Adopting a bimodal bilingual language acquisition model, this qualitative case study is the first in Germany to investigate the spoken and sign language development of hearing children of deaf adults (codas). The spoken language competence of six codas within the age range of 3;10 to 6;4 is assessed by a series of standardised tests (SETK 3-5, TROG-D, PDSS). Additionally, a language assessment tool designed specifically for hearing bilingual children named HAVAS 5 is employed to measure both the children’s spoken and sign language abilities. A heterogeneous picture emerges: all codas show abilities equal to those of monomodal monolingual children in their age range with regard to German sentence structure and verb inflection and an extensive receptive vocabulary, but deviations from the age norm are observed for the production of verbs and prepositions. Furthermore, three codas show below average T-values in some grammatical subtests. Overall, the findings suggest that at least some codas may acquire both of their languages (i.e. spoken and signed German) simultaneously. However, our study also indicates that the spoken language development of some codas as well as the acquisition context of this minority group strongly resembles a form of successive language acquisition that is known from children who acquire German as an early second language in a migration background.     

High yield fabrication of multilayer polydimethylsiloxane devices with freestanding micropillar arrays

A versatile method to fabricate a multilayer polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) device with micropillar arrays within the inner layer is reported. The method includes an inexpensive but repeatable approach for PDMS lamination at high compressive force to achieve high yield of pillar molding and transfer to a temporary carrier. The process also enables micropillar-containing thin films to be used as the inner layer of PDMS devices integrated with polymer membranes. A microfluidic cell culture device was demonstrated which included multiple vertically stacked flow channels and a pillar array serving as a cage for a collagen hydrogel. The functionality of the multilayer device was demonstrated by culturing collagen-embedded fibroblasts under interstitial flow through the three-dimensional scaffold. The fabrication methods described in this paper can find applications in a variety of devices, particularly for organ-on-chip applications.     

How do government agencies review and approve text content for publication on their Web sites? A framework to compare Web content management practices

This article describes a multicase field study of four public-facing Midwestern state agencies and how they organized the work of reviewing and approving textual content for publication on Internet Web sites. Drawing on field data and concepts from institutional theory, contingency theory, and organizational design, the paper generates a framework to document systematically the processes and practices involved in the review and approval of textual Web content. The framework is then used to compare textual content management practices across the four case sites and to begin to investigate the effects of variation in content management practices on characteristics of the available textual content. The article suggests how the framework could be used in future research to investigate how content practices affect content characteristics such as quality, quantity, and cost and to investigate how and why content management practices change over time.     

Book Review of Counseling Across the Lifespan: Prevention and Treatment

Counseling Across the Lifespan: Prevention and Treatment by Cindy L. Juntunen & Donald R. Atkinson (Eds.).