Pictorial Illustrations Still Improve Students' Learning from Text

Research conducted primarily during the 1970s and 1980s supported the assertion that carefully constructed text illustrations generally enhance learners' performance on a variety of text-dependent cognitive outcomes. Research conducted throughout the 1990s still strongly supports that assertion. The more recent research has extended pictures-in-text conclusions to alternative media and technological formats and has begun to explore more systematically the whys, whens, and for whoms of picture facilitation, in addition to the whethers and how muchs. Consideration is given here to both more and less conventional types of textbook illustration, with several tenets for teachers provided in relation to each type.     

Social Equity and Prosperity: Thailand Information Technology Policy into the 21st Century

This forum presents Thailand's National Information Technology (IT) Plan and comments on the plan by three international experts: Seymour Goodman, Heinrich Reinermann, and G. Russell Pipe. The plan, which was prepared for Thailand's National IT Committee by the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center, is striking for its explicit consideration of social as well as economic goals in its specific objectives and implementation proposals. Agenda item 1 of the plan is to 'Invest in an Equitable Information Infrastructure: To Enhance Human Ability and Enhance Life Quality.' Implementation of the plan is proceeding well, although somewhat more slowly than anticipated, and support for the original goals and objectives remains strong.     

Handedness and the Development of Direction and Sequencing in Children's Drawings of People

The effect of age and handedness on directionality and sequence in drawing was studied in 389 right‐ and left‐handed children aged from 2 to 11 years. Preschool right‐handers were more likely to draw right to left and to produce circles in a clockwise direction. In contrast, preschool left handers drew left to right with anti‐clockwise circle production. By the age of 9 to 11 years right‐handers had switched to predominantly left to right drawing with anti‐clockwise circle production and left‐handers to right to left, drawing and clockwise circle production. Irrespective of handedness, preschool children tended to begin at the bottom of the drawing and work towards the top, whereas the older groups tended to draw from the top to the bottom. It is suggested that these rules of directionality and sequencing may influence how children respond to writing instruction.     

Label-free isolation of a prostate cancer cell among blood cells and the single-cell measurement of drug accumulation using an integrated microfluidic chip

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are found in the blood of patients with cancer. Although these cells are rare, they can provide useful information for chemotherapy. However, isolation of these rare cells from blood is technically challenging because they are small in numbers. An integrated microfluidic chip, dubbed CTC chip, was designed and fabricated for conducting tumor cell isolation. As CTCs usually show multidrug resistance (MDR), the effect of MDR inhibitors on chemotherapeutic drug accumulation in the isolated single tumor cell is measured. As a model of CTC isolation, human prostate cancer cells were mixed with mouse blood cells and the label-free isolation of the tumor cells was conducted based on cell size difference. The major advantages of the CTC chip are the ability for fast cell isolation, followed by multiple rounds of single-cell measurements, suggesting a potential assay for detecting the drug responses based on the liquid biopsy of cancer patients.     

The transition from a university college to a university: a United Kingdom study

Tertiary Education and Management - As a result of policy changes, nearly all university colleges in the UK have been redesignated as universities. This transition was studied in one such...     

学龄前儿童体力活动研究的十大问题

摘要：目的是回顾与3-5岁儿童体力活动有关的重要研究问题。本文将从三个主要研究领域进行分析：健康效果、体力活动模式、干预和政策。研究的首要问题包括：确定体力活动的健康效果,确定体力活动对保持健康体重的影响,探明体力活动对学习和行为习惯的影响,以及静坐行为对健康的影响。与体力活动模式相关的研究问题包括,3-5岁儿童满足现有体力活动推荐量的情况;影响体力活动的社会和环境因素,包括家庭、幼儿园、社区环境;体力活动如何对学龄儿童期、青少年时期和成年以后产生影响。关于干预和政策方面的研究问题包括,确定在家庭、保育机构、社区环境最有效的促进体力活动的干预策略,以及不同幼儿适用的干预方案,确定有效的干预手段和宣传策略,制定有效的能够增加幼儿体力活动水平的国家、州、地方和机构的政策。总之,全面的了解体力活动对3-5岁儿童健康的影响,以便于掌握该群体的体力活动特点,探索如何促进幼儿的体力活动。     

Family Context,Mexican‐Origin Adolescent Mothers' Parenting Knowledge,and Children's Subsequent Developmental Outcomes

This study examined parenting knowledge among Mexican‐origin adolescent mothers (N = 191; M_age = 16.26 years), family contextual factors associated with adolescents' parenting knowledge, and toddlers' (M_age = 2.01 years) subsequent developmental outcomes. Data came from home interviews and direct child assessments. Adolescents both underestimated and overestimated children's developmental timing, and showed differences in their knowledge of specific developmental domains. Instrumental support from mother figures was positively linked to adolescents' knowledge accuracy, whereas emotional support was negatively related to adolescents' knowledge confidence. Furthermore, whereas mother figures' autonomy granting was positively linked to knowledge confidence, psychological control was associated with less accurate adolescent parenting knowledge. Toddlers of adolescents with more accurate knowledge showed positive developmental functioning. Intervention implications are discussed.     

The impact of integrated environmental studies programs: are students motivated to act pro-environmentally?

In Canada, there exists a noteworthy educational initiative referred to as Environmental Studies Programs (ESPs). These secondary school programs are interdisciplinary, helping to link subject matter and encouraging student responsibility. The results of two case studies of Ontario ESPs that analyze the impact of ESP participation on students’ attitudes to, and relationships with, the environment and the extent to which program participation informs domestic pro-environmental behaviors and/or emancipatory social and environmental actions are presented. The results from the focus group sessions indicate that students believe that they can effect environmental change but that they struggle with ways to meaningfully enact that change in light of ‘real world’ constraints.     

Managing knowledge performance: testing the components of a knowledge management system on organizational performance

The main purpose of the current study is to validate the framework of knowledge management (KM) capabilities created by Gold (Towards a theory of organizational knowledge management capabilities. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) 2001) in a study of South Korean companies. However, the original framework did not provide a thorough explanation of the effect of incentives, which motivate and encourage the knowledge management process. In this study, the modified framework that includes incentives in the knowledge infrastructure capability was tested. Moreover, since there is a weak linkage between KM and organizational performance, this study used empirical evidence to identify the relationship between KM capabilities (KMC) and four perspectives of organizational performance. Since structural equation modeling (SEM) is mostly used to describe causal relationships among unobserved (latent) and observed variables, this study used SEM procedures to determine whether there were any structural relationships between knowledge management capabilities and four perspectives of organizational performance. Moreover, the SEM procedure is “a statistical test to find whether a model fits a set of data, whether it matches a theoretical expectation” (Vogt, Dictionary of statistics & methodology. Sage Publications Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA, p 135, 2005). Therefore, this study also used SEM procedures to test a hypothesized model that had a good fit indicates that the model adequately describes the sample data. This study assumed that knowledge management capabilities could be divided into two types: knowledge infrastructure and process capabilities. The original hypothesized model showed that there was a positive relationship between knowledge management capabilities and organizational performance, but the overall model fit was insufficient to be accepted, because knowledge infrastructure and process capabilities were highly correlated. This study proposed two alternative models to find the best fit and found that knowledge infrastructure and process capabilities should be combined under the higher-order latent variable as subordinate latent variables. Lastly, there was a positive relationship between KMC and organizational performance. This study might not be free from common method bias to some degrees. It would be better to divide participants into two groups to respond to either the knowledge management capabilities survey or the organizational performance survey and to investigate the correlation between them. There are two main contributions for the field of knowledge management. First, this study attempted to integrate the fragmented literature of knowledge management into a holistic view and develop a framework for knowledge management. Moreover, this study found that there is a strong and positive relationship between KM infrastructure and process, which could refer that, to improve organizational performance, an organization should support KM processes, as well as build decent KM infrastructure. The results of this study would help KM practitioners to advocate the importance of KM to top managements.