Comparative analysis of delayed alternation learning in cats,mice, and guinea pigs

The performance of cats, guinea pigs, and mice in a delayed alternation paradigm was compared both during initial learning and following a 10-day retention interval. The testing situation (a modified T-maze), the length of the delay period (10 sec), and the amount of training per session and per week were kept identical for all three species. The results indicated that (1) animals of all three species acquired the task within similar time spans, (2) a considerable variance was apparent in the performance of individual animals independent of their species, and (3) guinea pigs, as a group, appeared to need a somewhat longer time to acquire delayed alternation than did mice and cats. Relearning of the task following the 10-day interval seemed to follow similar laws in all three species.     

Understanding teachers’ professional learning goals from their current professional concerns

In the day-to-day workplace teachers direct their own learning, but little is known about what drives their decisions about what they would like to learn. These decisions are assumed to be influenced by teachers’ current professional concerns. Also, teachers in different professional life phases have different reasons for engaging in professional learning. In this study, we explored the professional concerns underlying teachers’ learning goals in order to understand variation in professional learning over a teacher’s career. In this qualitative study, we administered a semi-structured interview and a card sorting task to 15 secondary school teachers to elicit teachers’ learning goals and current professional concerns. By conceptually combining teachers’ learning goals with professional concerns in concern-goal pairs, we sought to understand the different reasons for teachers’ learning. These concern-goal pairs were characterized in three different types of reasons: continuous, growth and improvement, and work-management. The results showed that early career teachers have mainly growth and improvement concerns, whereas mid- and late-career teachers have both continuous and growth and improvement concerns. Work-management concerns differ for early- and late-career teachers. Results are further discussed in terms of professional life phase models and teachers’ developmental tasks throughout their career.     

Knowledge practices and relations in professional education

ABSTRACT

The dynamics of knowledge in society have transformed the conditions of professional work and learning. Professional expertise has become increasingly specialised, and practitioners are challenged to keep up with rapid developments in their fields. At the same time, the complexity of professional work requires the integration of different forms of knowledge and knowing. Against this background, the knowledge settings in which learners engage and the practices and resources these offer are of vital importance. This article addresses professional education as embedded in profession-specific ‘machineries of knowledge construction’, that is, the set of practices and arrangements through which knowledge and ways of knowing in a profession are generated. It is argued that such machineries span settings in education and work. Examples from research in three professional programmes are used to discuss how students are introduced to epistemic practices and resources in selected knowledge settings. Analytical attention is given to the dynamic interplay between people, practices, knowledge resources and educational arrangements as well as to how connections to work and the epistemic machinery are made. Taking these linkages into account is important for our understanding of what learning entails in different areas of expertise and how this may change over time.     

Understanding perspectives and emotions in contract violation: development of deontic and moral reasoning

Children between the ages of 3 and 10 years were presented with a set of pictures representing a contract with bilateral cheating options between a parent and child (Study 1) and between 2 peers (Study 2). The children had to (a) evaluate which situations violated the contract when the relevant information was presented, (b) anticipate the feelings of the violator and the victim, and (c) infer possible contract violation from 2 different perspectives when relevant information was covered. Results show that logical inferences about contract violation differ according to the type of task. Negative feelings attributed to the violator were dependent on age and type of relationship, revealing a content-sensitive codevelopment of cognitive abilities and moral reasoning in young children.     

CANopen验证——如何让你的设备按照既定设计运行

随着CANopen的重要性与日俱增，促进了对CiA开发和生产的CANopen一致性测试工具（Conformance Test Tool）的需求。     

Do museums foster innovation through engagement with the cultural and creative industries?

The recent narrative on museums as catalysts of innovation and growth considers their relations with other cultural and creative industries (CCIs) to be very important. We argue that most relations museums establish with CCI firms and institutions are unlikely to produce strong positive externalities that make the latter more innovative. To prove this claim, we propose a conceptual framework qualifying project-based and supply chain relations between museums and CCIs as either strong, moderate, or weak links, according to their potential in terms of knowledge spillovers from museums to CCIs. We apply this taxonomy to data collected from 261 Polish museums. Our findings indicate that strong links are outnumbered by moderate and weak ones. We then suggest that the traditional missions of museums, in particular education and conservation, need to be more thoroughly assessed in terms of their direct and indirect contributions in order to fully capture the impact of museums on innovation in the wider economy.

     

Definitions of bullying: a comparison of terms used,and age and gender differences,in a fourteen-country international comparison

The study of school bullying has recently assumed an international dimension, but is faced with difficulties in finding terms in different languages to correspond to the English word bullying. To investigate the meanings given to various terms, a set of 25 stick-figure cartoons was devised, covering a range of social situations between peers. These cartoons were shown to samples of 8- and 14-year-old pupils (N = 1,245; n = 604 at 8 years, n = 641 at 14 years) in schools in 14 different countries, who judged whether various native terms cognate to bullying, applied to them. Terms from 10 Indo-European languages and three Asian languages were sampled. Multidimensional scaling showed that 8-year-olds primarily discriminated nonaggressive and aggressive cartoon situations; however, 14-year-olds discriminated fighting from physical bullying, and also discriminated verbal bullying and social exclusion. Gender differences were less appreciable than age differences. Based on the 14-year-old data, profiles of 67 words were then constructed across the five major cartoon clusters. The main types of terms used fell into six groups: bullying (of all kinds), verbal plus physical bullying, solely verbal bullying, social exclusion, solely physical aggression, and mainly physical aggression. The findings are discussed in relation to developmental trends in how children understand bullying, the inferences that can be made from cross-national studies, and the design of such studies.     

Establishment of Reference Interval for Liver Specific Biochemical Parameters in Apparently Healthy North Indian Population

Reference intervals (RI) are the most common decision support tool used for interpretation of numerical laboratory reports. The quality of the RI can play as large a role in result interpretation as the quality of the result itself. As such there is hardly any study examining RI for liver specific biochemical parameters in Indian population especially north Indians having drastically different food habits as compared to rest of the India. So there is a need to establish the RI for north Indian population. Present study was conducted on 2,021 apparently healthy individuals of north Indian origin ranging in age from 15–60 years, were selected randomly using defined criteria. Lipemic, hemolysed, icteric and stored samples were also excluded adopting preanalytical criteria for rejection of sample. Non parametric methodology for determination of RI was adopted as most of the biochemical parameters included revealed non Gaussian distribution. Data were analyzed for middle 95 percentile (2.5th–97.5th percentile), median and 95 % confidence interval using SPSS software package version 10.0. The upper and the lower limit of RI (reported Vs observed) for bilirubin (0–1.2 Vs 0.30–1.30 mg/dL), serum glutamate oxaloacetate transferase (SGOT) (0–41 Vs 13–52.80 IU/L), serum glutamate pyruvate transferase (SGPT) (0–50 Vs 10–68 IU/L) showed wide variation as compared to reported standard RI however Gamma glutamyl transferase (GGT) (0–50 Vs 5.00–50.60 IU/L) remained within the reported standard RI. Further gender wise evaluation revealed higher cutoff in males (AST 14–55, ALT 11–70.35, GGT 6.76–51.09 in IU/L, bilirubin (0.40–1.34 mg/dL) as compared to females (SGOT 13–50.43, SGPT 9–63.43, GGT 3.92–48.70 in IU/L, Bilirubin 0.30–1.20 mg/dL) for both enzymatic and non enzymatic biochemical parameters. The variations may be attributed to dietary pattern smoking and alcoholism.