Hearing and Talking to the Other Side: Antecedents of Cross-Cutting Exposure in Adolescents

Although scholars have enthusiastically examined the outcomes of cross-cutting exposure, few studies have explored its antecedents. Moreover, most studies have attended to adults. But it is during adolescence and early adulthood that citizens are most likely to be socialized into valuing and engaging in heterogeneous discussion. The present study employs a panel survey of American adolescents, age 12 to 17, to examine the predictive power of home, school, and media use variables on two outcomes related to valuing and talking to the other side. Our findings demonstrate that adolescents’ attitudes toward valuing cross-cutting exposure as well as indulging in heterogeneous talk are consistently predicted by concept-oriented home environment and school curriculum. Among the media variables, cable news negatively and newspaper and online news positively influenced our outcome variables. Implications are discussed.     

Universities and the knowledge-based economy: perceptions from a developing country

This paper considers the role of universities in the creation of a knowledge-based economy (KBE) in a developing country, Pakistan. Some developing countries have moved quickly to develop a KBE, but progress in Pakistan is much slower. Higher education plays a crucial role as part of the triple helix model for innovation. Based on the perceptions of university leaders and academic staff, the paper examines how the transformation towards a KBE in Pakistan is viewed within higher education and identifies some of the blockages and contradictions that hinder development. In particular, the paper suggests that a more integrated education system bringing together primary, secondary and tertiary education to work for a common purpose will be essential.     

Orienting Toward Face‐Like Stimuli in Early Childhood

Newborn infants orient preferentially toward face‐like or “protoface” stimuli and recent studies suggest similar reflexive orienting responses in adults. Little is known, however, about the operation of this mechanism in childhood. An attentional‐cueing procedure was therefore developed to investigate protoface orienting in early childhood. Consistent with the extant literature, 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children (n = 25) exhibited orienting toward face‐like stimuli; they responded faster when target location was cued by the appearance of a protoface stimulus than when location was cued by matched control patterns. The potential of this procedure to investigate the development of typical and atypical social perception is discussed.     

对“用欧拉角描述人体髋关节运动”论点的商榷

目前有些专家、学者用欧拉角来描述髖关节的运动,然而,欧拉角的运用会出现数学计算上的困难,且所涉及的转轴与人体基本运动轴不一致。本文介绍了与人体运动轴较为相符,且又可避免欧拉角应用时数学计算困难的一种方法,即用布里恩角来描述人体髖关节的定点运动。     

Attitudes of Kuwaiti parents toward physical punishment of children

Objective: The major aim was to describe parental attitudes to physical punishments and examine their sociodemographic correlates. A related aim was to assess the association of parents’ own experience of physical punishment with attitudes to punishment of children.Method: A cross-sectional survey was conducted during the second week of December, 1996 in five general clinics covering the major administrative areas of Kuwait: 337 Kuwaiti mothers and fathers with at least one living child were contacted; 95% were successfully interviewed using a structured questionnaire.Results: Eighty-six percent of parents agreed with physical punishment as a means of child disciplining. Agreement with punishment was higher in case of serious misbehaviors such as stealing (63%), sniffing glue and using drugs (77%). Multiple regression results showed that parent’s lower level of education and Bedouin ethnicity were positively associated with agreement on physical punishment. Larger percentages of parents who had experienced physical punishments themselves agreed with such punishment to discipline their children, but this was not statistically significant.Conclusions: In recent years education has become widespread for both sexes. An inverse association between educational level and agreement on physical beating suggest that attitudes to this form of child disciplining are changing. Those with a Bedouin ethnic background still adhere more strictly to the traditional forms of child disciplining including physical beating. There is a need for conducting research on the possible negative psychosocial impacts of physical punishment in view of findings from other countries.     

Research agenda for social Q&A

As new venues of information and tools for information access are emerging, people's online information seeking behavior is dramatically evolving. While a majority of well-established and classical models of information seeking and behavior are still valid, there is a growing need to study and explain novel information sources and information seeking behaviors that are unique to these sources. One emerging domain is social question and answer (Q&A). This article develops a research agenda for social Q&A, reviewing recent studies and identifying core issues, questions, and challenges.     

建设和谐校园文化之探究

和谐的校园文化能够有效促进师生的身心和谐以及人际关系的和谐,能够培养他们自尊自信、勤奋进取、理性平和的豁达、宽容心态,能够推进学校的学风和校风建设。和谐校园文化的建设必须营造和谐的师生关系,加强对大学生的社会主义核心价值观教育,不断强化学生的团队意识,加强教风和学风的建设以及诚信与文明作风的培养,把“八荣八耻”的精神实质贯穿到学校教育、教学的各个环节,全面推动学校和谐校园文化建设。     

International students’ choice to study in China: an exploratory study

Tertiary Education and Management - International higher education is a major source of revenue in many developed countries. Historically the top destination countries for international students...     

Defining the quality of higher education around ethics and moral values

The context of higher education across the world currently presents evidence of university failures. These failures are evident in areas such as governance, financial and risk management, conduct of senior leaders and quality assurance issues surrounding international education. Having this in mind, the present paper argues the need to add a new definition (to what is already known) of quality. The conceptual approach proposed by the authors takes into account ethics and morals as key virtues of the higher education sector. The literature shows that it is still difficult to find agreement on a single definition of the concept. University leaders and quality assurance professionals define quality in many different ways. However, despite the ethical challenges in the current higher education landscape, little has been discussed on the connection between quality, ethics and moral values. Therefore, the authors provide the unexplored relationship between these concepts.