Congenital atresia of the left main coronary artery in an infant

Congenital atresia of the left main coronary artery is a rare occurrence, and surgical revascularizationbypass graft is required. We here report a rare case of congenital coronary anomaly in an infant. A 10-month-old male infant was admitted to the hospital with heart failure symptoms. Echocardiographic examinations revealed mitral valve regurgitation and ischemic changes of the anterolateral papillary muscle and chordae. Coronary angiography showed atresia of the left main coronary artery with a severe hypoplastic left anterior descending artery and a circumflex coronary artery. Unfortunately, sudden cardiac arrest occurred after catheterization and the infant did not recover despite of immediate cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Further studies are needed to find a newer diagnostic method to detect coronary anomaly in an infant, and coronary angiography, if necessary, has to be performed very carefully.     

Correction to: Latent profiles of attitudes toward print and digital reading among adolescents

Reading and Writing - In the original publication, the article title was incorrectly published. The correct title has been given with this Correction.     

Understanding the majority opinion formation process in online environments: An exploratory approach to Facebook

Majority opinions are often observed in the process of social interaction in online communities, but few studies have addressed this issue with empirical data. To identify an appropriate theoretical lens for explaining majority opinions in online environments, this study investigates the skewness statistic, which indicates how many “Likes” are skewed to major comments on a Facebook post; 3489 posts are gathered from the New York Times Facebook page for 100 days. Results show that time is not an influential factor for skewness increase, but the number of comments has a logarithmic relation to skewness increase. Regression models and Chow tests show that this relationship differs depending on topic contents, but majority opinions are significant in overall. These results suggest that the bandwagon effect due to social affordance can be a suitable mechanism for explaining majority opinion formation in an online environment and that majority opinions in online communities can be misperceived due to overestimation.     

Transition from high school to higher education and work in Korea, from the competency-based education perspective

We examined how much Korean high school education helps students to build up the competencies needed for their college education and the world of work. We surveyed 227 high school graduates. They particularly emphasized communication skills, a cooperative attitude, computer skills, making friends and maintaining friendships, adaptability, self-directed learning and creative problem solving skills for their future life. However, they think high school education generally does not help students to build up the needed skills. In fact, they want more extracurricular activities, laboratory classes, practical training, career guidance, and diverse pedagogies than are currently given.     

Differential contribution of psycholinguistic and cognitive skills to written composition in Chinese as a second language

Reading and Writing - This study examined the contribution of the constructs of orthographic processing (orthographic choice and orthographic choice in context), syntactic processing...     

The use of microcomputer technology in a modular approach to reading and reading difficulties

This paper outlines the theoretical framework of a two-year two cohort study of inter-related modules to model reading in 300 grades 4, 5 and 6 readers, and describes the specially designed microcomputer programs written in Turbo Pascal to implement this modular approach. In brief, the modular approach postulates the interrelated phonological, morphological modules in processing words and sentence/paragraph processing. These three modules or components are subserved by 10 measurable tasks all implemented on the microcomputer (IBM-PC compatible) with reaction time measures as indices of the different facets of verbal efficiency. Statistical analyses of the large data sets for Phase 1 show the linear structural equation modelling fits the data reasonably well. In particular, the morphology task consistently explains between 32% to 44% of the variance in reading performance in the three grades. The findings lend themselves to specific approaches to habilitation in the different components or sub-components.This study was supported by a grant (No. 410-86-0048) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada awarded to Che Kan Leong. Simon Lock and Jacky Lau were responsible for the microcompurter programming. Edward Danskin, Melvin Kelley, Donald Simmons, Louise Sellinger, Kristin Strauss and Tara Wiley carried out the experimentation with individual children in the schools. The cooperation of the principals, the teachers and the subjects was greatly appreciated. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Dr. C. K. Leong, Department for the Education of Exceptional children, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada, S7N OWO.     

Identifying 21st Century STEM Competencies Using Workplace Data

Gaps between science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and required workplace skills have been identified in industry, academia, and government. Educators acknowledge the need to reform STEM education to better prepare students for their future careers. We pursue this growing interest in the skills needed for STEM disciplines and ask whether frameworks for 21st century skills and engineering education cover all of important STEM competencies. In this study, we identify important STEM competencies and evaluate the relevance of current frameworks applied in education using the standardized job-specific database operated and maintained by the US Department of Labor. Our analysis of the importance of 109 skills, types of knowledge and work activities, revealed 18 skills, seven categories of knowledge, and 27 work activities important for STEM workers. We investigate the perspectives of STEM and non-STEM job incumbents, comparing the importance of each skill, knowledge, and work activity for the two groups. We aimed to condense dimensions of the 52 key areas by categorizing them according to the Katz and Kahn (1978) framework and testing for inter-rater reliability. Our findings show frameworks for 21st century skills and engineering education do not encompass all important STEM competencies. Implications for STEM education programs are discussed, including how they can bridge gaps between education and important workplace competencies.