An Investigation of Title Ambiguity in the Health Sciences Literature

This research investigates what most catalogers already know—titles alone do not identify works sufficiently. Repetitive titles like “Annual Report” are just the tip of the iceberg. To explore the extent of ambiguity occurring in large sets of health science bibliographic data, the entire National Library of Medicine and Lane Medical Library catalogs and a sample from the PubMed database were analyzed. After measuring the uniqueness of titles, results were recalculated to determine the effect of appending date and/or edition. This initial evidence supports further exploration of whether such structured titles might serve as singular bibliographic identities.     

Computational auditory scene analysis: listening to several things at once

The problem of distinguishing particular sounds, such as conversation, against a background of irrelevant noise is a matter of common experience. Psychologists have studied it for some 40 years, but is is only comparatively recently that computer modelling of the phenomenon has been attempted. This article reviews progress made, possible practical applications, and prospects for the future.     

GCSE mathematics in further education: challenging beliefs and practices

This paper describes the outcomes of a two-year study on the beliefs and practices adopted by four FE teachers in their attempt to teach one-year GCSE retake classes and the subsequent effects on students' learning. In the second year of the study, an attempt was made to perturb these practices by introducing a substantial collection of classroom discussion resources. These focused on well-known conceptual obstacles and were intended to provoke cognitive conflict and reflection. Modest, yet significant learning gains were observed with two of the classes, but not with the others. Reasons for this appear to be related to teachers' beliefs about learning.     

The high cost of speech change

The results of the statistical analyses completed in this study indicated that effective student actors were more aesthetically oriented, less economically and politically oriented, and less sociable than were ineffective student actors.     

Mixing distance and face‐to‐face higher education

There is an unreal demarcation in higher education between distance and face‐to‐face providers, argues Malcolm Tight, Director of the Centre for Research and Development in Part‐time Higher Education at Birkbeck College, University of London. Given the undoubted success of distance education, established by the Open University and others, there is now a strong case for diversifying methods of provision in higher education, in the interests of expanding opportunities for students and increasing the effectiveness of teachers.