Design observations for interagency collaboration

We present 14 design observations for public safety networks (PSNs) and describe how they may apply more broadly to a wider range of inter-organizational systems within the public sector. A PSN is an interagency collaboration focused on developing and using information systems in support of information sharing and functional interoperability among public safety organizations engaged in law enforcement, criminal justice, and emergency response. We base our design observations upon an analysis of an extensive survey of 80 PSNs plus 6 in-depth case studies. The design observations identify commonalities that can guide agencies participating in interagency collaborations in addressing the interlocking issues they face. Our goal in presenting this set of design observations is to: (1) encourage improved PSN systems design and (2) draw attention to the importance of jointly addressing governance and technological considerations when designing PSNs.     

The IFLA Trend Report: Looking Beyond the Walls in Library Planning

Strategic planning requires us to stop and take a closer look at our organizations and consider the impact that changes in the profession are causing, influenced by the society around us. These considerations lead us past our library walls, past our institutional walls and into a more speculative world of changes in the technological society. Scholars and pundits have provided us with many scenarios for the future, including a world of solely electronic resources and hyper-connected users. But how closely does this match reality and what are the trends in our larger society that will affect how we work in the future. This article provides an overview of several reports on the students and technologies that we work with and closely explores the IFLA Trend Report. The report was developed after discussions with individuals representing many non-academic, non-library organizations and provides us with a view of the larger trends forecast for the information society. The report is envisioned as a living document that invites further comment and wider distribution to the library world and beyond.     

Promoting Mother–Infant Book Sharing and Infant Attention and Language Development in an Impoverished South African Population: A Pilot Study

The low rates of child literacy in South Africa are cause for considerable concern. Research from the developed world shows that parental sharing of picture books with infants and young children is beneficial for child language and cognitive development, as well as literacy skills. We conducted a pilot study to examine whether such benefits might extend to an impoverished community in South Africa, by evaluating the impact of training mothers in book sharing with their 14–18 month old infants. Seventeen mothers received book sharing training; and 13 mothers did not, but instead received a comparison training in toy play. We assessed the mothers’ behavior during both book sharing and toy play before and after training, and we also assessed infant attention and language. Mothers receiving book sharing training engaged well with it, and they also benefited from it; thus, compared to the comparison group mothers, they became more sensitive, more facilitating, and more elaborative with their infants during book sharing, and they also became more sensitive to their infants during toy play. In addition, infants whose mothers received the book sharing training showed greater benefits than the comparison group infants in both their attention and language. Training in book sharing for families living in conditions of marked socio-economic adversity in South Africa has the potential to be of considerable benefit to child developmental progress. A large scale controlled trial is required to confirm this.     

Converting between estimates of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity derived from raw accelerations measured at the wrist and from ActiGraph counts measured at the hip: the Rosetta Stone

The ability to compare published group-level estimates of objectively measured moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) across studies continues to increase in difficulty. The objective of this study was to develop conversion equations and demonstrate their utility to compare estimates of MVPA derived from the wrist and hip. Three studies of youth (N = 232, 9-12yrs, 50% boys) concurrently wore a hip-worn ActiGraph and a wrist-worn GENEActiv for 7-days. ActiGraph hip count data were reduced using four established cutpoints. Wrist accelerations were reduced using the Hildebrand MVPA 200 mg threshold. Conversion equations were developed on a randomly selected subsample of 132 youth. Equations were cross-validated and absolute error, absolute percent error, and modified Bland-Altman plots were evaluated for conversion accuracy. Across equations R²_adj was 0.51–0.56 with individual-level absolute error in minutes ranging from 7 (wrist-to-hip Puyau) to 14.5 minutes (wrist-to-hip Freedson 3MET) and absolute percent differences ranging from 13.9%-24.5%. Group-level cross-validation to convert hip-to-wrist MVPA resulted in average absolute percent errors ranging from 3.1%-4.9%. Conversion of wrist-to-hip MVPA resulted in average absolute percent errors ranging from 3.0%-10.0%. We recommend the use of these equations to compare published estimates of MVPA between the wear-site cut-point combinations presented.     

CASE Tools: Constructivism and its Application to Learning and Usability of Software Engineering Tools

Software Engineering is a new discipline aimed at the improvement of the production of large, quality software systems. Interest in CASE tools has grown because of the important role they play in supporting the software development process. Studies show these complex and sophisticated tools have a positive impact on quality and productivity but they have been slow to be adopted by industry; this is partially explained by the difficulty of learning to use the tool.     

Phonemic—Morphemic dissociation in university students with dyslexia: an index of reading compensation?

A phonological deficit constitutes a primary cause of developmental dyslexia, which persists into adulthood and can explain some aspects of their reading impairment. Nevertheless, some dyslexic adults successfully manage to study at university level, although very little is currently known about how they achieve this. The present study investigated at both the individual and group levels, whether the development of another oral language skill, namely, morphological knowledge, can be preserved and dissociated from the development of phonological knowledge. Reading, phonological, and morphological abilities were measured in 20 dyslexic and 20 non-dyslexic university students. The results confirmed the persistence of deficits in phonological but not morphological abilities, thereby revealing a dissociation in the development of these two skills. Moreover, the magnitude of the dissociation correlated with reading level. The outcome supports the claim that university students with dyslexia may compensate for phonological weaknesses by drawing on morphological knowledge in reading.     

Peer Groups as a Context for School Misconduct: The Moderating Role of Group Interactional Style

Peer group interactional style was examined as a moderator of the relation between peer group school misconduct and group members' school misconduct. Participants were 705 students (M_age = 11.59 years, SD = 1.37) in 148 peer groups. Children reported on their school misconduct in fall and spring. In the winter, group members were observed in a limited‐resource task and a group conversation task, and negative and positive group interactional styles were assessed. Multilevel modeling indicated that membership in groups that were higher on school misconduct predicted greater school misconduct only when the groups were high on negative or low on positive interactional style. Results suggest that negative laughter and a coercive interactional style may intensify group effects on children's misconduct.     

The paradigmatic hearts of subjects which their ‘English’ flows through

Much research into the use of corpora and discourse to support higher education students on pre-sessional and in-sessional courses champions subject specificity. Drawing on the work of writers such as Bakhtin [(1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays by MM Bakhtin (M. Holquist, Ed.; C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press] and Voloshinov [(1973). Marxism and the philosophy of language (L. Matejka, & I.R. Titunik, Trans.). New York: Seminar Press. (Original work published 1929)], in this article we extend this research by showing how the specific subject ‘context’ is fundamentally linked with the ‘English’ used within it. We first detail some of the literature related to corpus and genre studies and discuss some of the literature related to the importance of providing a context for language. We then present and discuss data from 21 interviews and five focus groups with subject lecturers to illustrate how the ‘English’ used in the subject areas of ‘Design’, ‘Nursing’, ‘Business’ and ‘Computing’ subjects flows through what we term their ‘paradigmatic hearts’. By ‘paradigmatic heart’ we mean the set of values, beliefs and perceptions that represent the central or innermost engine of the subject, through which its ‘English’ flows. In ‘Design’ the paradigmatic heart is ‘visual’, ‘philosophical’ and ‘persuasive’; for ‘Nursing’ it is ‘emotional’ and ‘empathetic’, yet also ‘technical’; for ‘Business’ subjects it is ‘income generating’, ‘numerical’ and ‘persuasive’; and for ‘Computing’ it may be ‘visual’, ‘numerical’ or ‘code-based’. We demonstrate how ‘English’ flows through the paradigmatic heart of its subject and that to remove the ‘English’ from its subject paradigmatic heart changes its nature. Thus, we argue that if students are not being taught ‘English’ in the context of the subject, the ‘English’ we are teaching them will be different, and that preparation and support needs to be undertaken in the subject itself.