Deficits in emotion regulation mediate the relationship between childhood abuse and later eating disorder symptoms

The present study examined the relationship of child maltreatment to both emotion dysregulation and subsequent eating pathology. In an effort to extend previous research, the authors examined the unique impact of childhood emotional abuse (CEA) on emotion dysregulation and eating disorder (ED) symptoms while controlling for the effects of sexual and physical abuse. Structural equation modeling was utilized to simultaneously examine the effects of all three abuse types on multiple dependent variables as well as examine whether deficits in emotion regulation mediated the relationship between abuse and eating pathology. Results from a survey of 1,254 female college students revealed significant paths from abuse subtypes to specific eating disorder symptoms, with CEA evidencing the strongest association with ED symptoms. Additionally, emotion dysregulation was positively associated with ED symptoms, and mediated the effects of emotional abuse on symptoms. Findings support previous research on the enduring effects of emotional abuse as well as highlight the importance of the assessment of CEA in the treatment of ED symptoms.     

Who gets access to fast broadband? Evidence from Los Angeles County

Regulatory and market changes in residential (fixed) broadband have raised concerns about Internet Service Providers (ISPs) prioritizing investments in the most profitable areas, thus relegating low-income and minority communities to fewer broadband options and legacy networks. This study examines these concerns for Los Angeles (LA) County during the 2014–18 period. The analysis uses rollout data collected by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in combination with demographic information from the American Community Survey (ACS). Because the spatial distribution of broadband investments cannot be directly observed, competition and the availability of FTTH services are used as proxies. The findings indicate that competition and fiber-based services are less likely in low-income areas and minority communities, with the most severe deficits observed in census block groups that combine poverty and a large share of Black residents. We outline alternative policy tools to address intracity inequalities in broadband investments in the conclusion.     

Creating technology-enriched classrooms: implementational challenges in Turkish education

This paper provides an overview of the status of educational technology in Turkey. In the face of severe social and economic challenges, many developing nations, including Turkey, are looking to education as a potential remedy. Recognizing that in an increasingly technology-dependent world, information and communications technology skills and knowledge are critical in order to compete in the global marketplace, Turkey is firmly committed not only to improving its education system, but also to incorporating the use of educational technologies into the instructional strategy and curriculum used in schools. This is a critical initiative because, as research shows, technology-enriched educational environments can provide students with significantly expanded learning opportunities, which are linked with increased levels of academic achievement. However, like many other developing countries, Turkey is struggling to overcome a number of serious barriers to full technology integration at the classroom level, the most significant of which is non-compliance on the part of teachers. With respect to technology use in education, teachers are consistently failing to utilize technological tools for instruction purposes, for a variety of reasons. Turkey must address these reasons in order to ensure that the agenda of technology adoption into schools, an enormously expensive undertaking, does not fail.     

TYPES OF ACADEMIC EXCHANGES AND TARGET GROUPS: BALANCES AND IMBALANCES

The article considers, on one hand, the need to increase East‐West and West‐East academic exchanges in Europe, and on the other, to reduce or to rationalize imbalances. The three major segments of university populations, students, faculty members, and administrators, are each examined with regard to participation in exchanges, and pertinent suggestions are made. The author particularly insists on the importance of involving university administrators in exchange programmes even to the extent of moving them physically to other universities for stays of varying length. In closing, he evokes the setting up of the European Association of International Exchange Administrators.     

Teaching for understanding and/or self-regulated learning? A video-based analysis of reform-oriented mathematics instruction in Switzerland

In mathematics instruction, can a teacher implement surface features of instruction that foster self-regulated learning as well as achieve quality at the deeper level of instruction, that is, focus on higher-order thinking, problem-solving, and mathematical modeling? An educational reform effort in Switzerland, which is based on constructivist and sociocultural theories of mathematics learning, targets both these dimensions: self-regulated learning and conceptual understanding. We examined the realization of the two dimensions in classroom instruction in a video-based study of 79 eighth-grade math classes using three kinds of data: videotapes of mathematics lessons, student and teacher questionnaires, and achievement tests. As to the surface level of instruction, teachers reported how frequently they provided opportunities for self-regulated learning. With regard to the deeper level of instruction, teachers reported how frequently they provided opportunities for independent problem solving. In addition, we examined the extent to which teachers’ pedagogical beliefs reflected a constructivist orientation. The results showed that teachers implemented the two dimensions relatively independently of one another. Teachers’ constructivist-oriented beliefs influenced only opportunities provided for independent problem solving and did not affect opportunities for self-regulated learning. Opportunities for self-regulated learning had a positive effect on students’ learning experience. Professional development should encourage teachers to take greater account of both surface-level and deeper-level (quality) features of instruction.     

Mobile Agents for Distributed and Heterogeneous Information Retrieval

The heterogeneous, distributed and voluminous nature of many government and corporate data sources impose severe constraints on meeting the diverse requirements of users who analyze the data. Additionally, communication bandwidth limitations, time constraints, and multiple data formats impose further restrictions on users of these distributed data sources. In this paper, we present an Agent-based Complex QUerying and Information Retrieval Engine (ACQUIRE) for large, heterogeneous, and distributed data sources. ACQUIRE acts as a softbot or interface agent by presenting users with a view of a single, unified, homogenous data source, against which users can pose high-level declarative queries. ACQUIRE translates each such user query into a set of sub-queries by employing a combination of planning and traditional database query optimization techniques. ACQUIRE then spawns a set of mobile agents corresponding to these sub-queries, which in turn retrieve the data from various distributed data sources by dynamically optimizing the retrieval strategy as it is carried out. These mobile agents carry with them data-processing code that can be executed at the remote site, thus reducing the size of data returned by the agent. When all mobile agents have returned, ACQUIRE filters and merges the retrieved data and presents the results to the user. While the system is still very much a work in progress, current validation experiments on simulated NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) have demonstrated that complex queries can be effectively decomposed and retrieved by this approach.