Stimulus blocking during compound discrimination training with pentobarbital and visual stimuli

Learning & Behavior - To investigate blocking by drug-induced stimuli and visual stimuli, three groups of rats were trained to escape shock in a T-maze by choosing the left or right arm. During...     

周立波故乡生活小说创作琐谈

周立波在益阳农村深入生活达十年之久,所创作的长篇小说《山乡巨变》取得了不可低估的现实主义成就;所创作的短篇小说充满着诗意美;周立波故乡生活继承了乡土小说传统,开创了新风格、新主题、新传统。     

Group assessments: dilemmas facing lecturers in multicultural tertiary classrooms

‘Group is good, and group is good for curing all social ills’ was the cynical observation of one of the lecturers in this study. Her comment reflects the uneasiness of lecturers at tertiary institutions with the notion that the educational advantages of group assessments far outweigh the disadvantages, and that such an approach promotes the integration of minority groups in multicultural universities. The dilemmas facing lecturers in multicultural tertiary classrooms are reflected on in this paper, when they adopt group assessment as a means of evaluation and highlight those challenges that often jeopardize the successful implementation of this type of practice.     

Effects of tactile training on visual speechreading: performance changes related to individual differences in cognitive skills

We report on a follow-up study of the R?nnberg, Andersson, Lyxell, & Spens (1998) speech tracking training study. The purpose was to examine, initially and after training, the effects of different tactile aids on tasks of visual speechreading. We also examined cognitive prerequisites for initial baseline speechreading and posttraining speechreading performance. Compared with speechreading alone, tactile aids impaired sentence-based speechreading at first, although performance improved with training. No effects of vibrotactile aids or training were obtained for visual word-decoding. Initial baseline speechreading performance and posttraining performance correlated with cognitive skills, but the size of the correlations changed. The size of the correlations also varied with the different tactually mediated speechreading conditions.     

Generalizable aspects of the development of expertise in ballet across countries and cultures: a perspective from the expert-performance approach

The expert-performance approach guided the collection of survey data on the developmental history of elite professional ballet dancers from three different countries/cultures (USA, Mexico, and Russia). The level of ballet expertise attained by age 18 was found to be uniquely predicted by only two factors, namely the total number of accumulated hours of dance practice through age 17 and the age of first having the “idea of becoming a professional dancer.” Older starting ages were associated with a more rapid increase of weekly training, so starting ages were not correlated with amount of practice accumulated at age 17 or attained ballet performance by age 18. Different detailed developmental paths leading to elite ballet performance are described and their theoretical implications discussed.     

User Expectations in Higher Education Library Services in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper outlines the developments in Nigerian higher education with emphasis on the universities. The population of students and faculty has grown; funding for university libraries has declined; books and journals have become scarce and costly. User needs have not diminished. There is pressure on the university libraries with increasing expectations from users. These expectations provide the vision for librarians to tune their sentences to satisfy the users. The paper finally urges the Committee of University Librarians of Nigerian Universities (CULNU) to act now and not give excuses for failure to do so.     

A Brief History of Workforce Education in Community Colleges

ABSTRACT

Over its 100-year plus history the community college has struggled to make clear its mission. As a comprehensive community college its mission has bounced around to focus on liberal arts, developmental, workforce, community, and general education. In today’s increasingly competitive society with shifting values and changes in power it is likely that workforce education/career and technical education will remain a foundational mission of the community college. Workforce education is strongly supported by state and federal legislators who demonstrate that support with billions of dollars. It is strongly supported by business and industry. And it is strongly supported by parents and students. This brief history captures many of the key issues and developments of the continuing evolution of workforce education in the community college.     

The Life and Character of Isaac Leeser the Educator

A frequent negative criticism directed toward Jewish education is its alleged “non-effect” or “effects” on most of its students. Most students are exposed to such a limited total amount of Jewish elementary and supplementary schooling, we are told, that it has little if any discernible effect on their subsequent adult Jewish knowledge, identity, and religiosity.     

Dissipativity of discrete-time BAM stochastic neural networks with Markovian switching and impulses

This paper addresses the problem of global exponential dissipativity for a class of uncertain discrete-time BAM stochastic neural networks with time-varying delays, Markovian jumping and impulses. By constructing a proper Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional and combining with linear matrix inequality (LMI) technique, several sufficient conditions are derived for verifying the global exponential dissipativity in the mean square of such stochastic discrete-time BAM neural networks. The derived conditions are established in terms of linear matrix inequalities, which can be easily solved by some available software packages. One important feature presented in our paper is that without employing model transformation and free-weighting matrices our obtained result leads to less conservatism. Additionally, three numerical examples with simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness and usefulness of the obtained result.