Ground zero: The information war in the Persian Gulf

This article provides an overview for the symposium while delving into specific facts about the development and implementation of the Pentagon's press policy during the Persian Gulf War. The article assesses the military-media relationship, and the Pentagon's own policy development, in the aftermath of the invasions of Grenada and Panama. It describes the power and authority of the President, and civilian and military leaders, at the time of the war, to supersede the best intentions and plans of Pentagon public affairs specialists. It reveals the inability of the media during war to perceive and impact how such policy is shaped. The article identifies, as a high priority, the independent, timely, and accurate reporting to the nation when America enters combat.     

Effects of knowledge of semantic roles on summarizing written prose

College students wrote summaries of eight short passages as a test of their ability to identify important information. After pairing naive summaries according to length and original passage, those summaries which judges identified as “better” were found to contain significantly more of the major semantic roles, such as Agent and Instrument, than did summaries judged “not as good.” It was also found that students wrote significantly better summaries when instructed to base the summaries on the major semantic roles within the passage. These summaries were significantly better than summaries based upon the traditional paragraph analysis of “topics” and “main ideas,” and they were significantly better than summaries written without any special instructions.     

Time-motion analysis of elite field hockey, with special reference to repeated-sprint activity

Limited information exists about the movement patterns of field-hockey players, especially during elite competition. Time-motion analysis was used to document the movement patterns during an international field-hockey game. In addition, the movement patterns of repeated-sprint activity were investigated, as repeated-sprint ability is considered to be an important fitness component of team-sport performance. Fourteen members of the Australian men's field-hockey team (age 26+/-3 years, body mass 76.7+/-5.6 kg, VO2max 57.9+/-3.6 ml.kg(-1).min(-1); mean+/-s) were filmed during an international game and their movement patterns were analysed. The majority of the total player game time was spent in the low-intensity motions of walking, jogging and standing (46.5+/-8.1, 40.5+/-7.0 and 7.4+/-0.9%, respectively). In comparison, the proportions of time spent in striding and sprinting were 4.1+/-1.1 and 1.5+/-0.6%, respectively. Our criteria for 'repeated-sprint' activity (defined as a minimum of three sprints, with mean recovery duration between sprints of less than 21 s) was met on 17 occasions during the game (total for all players), with a mean 4+/-1 sprints per bout. On average, 95% of the recovery during the repeated-sprint bouts was of an active nature. In summary, the results suggest that the motion activities of an elite field-hockey competition are similar to those of elite soccer, rugby and Australian Rules football. In addition, the investigation of repeated-sprint activity during competition has provided additional information about the unique physiological demands of elite field-hockey performance.     

Individual differences in young children's recall and clustering of pictures

Children's incidental recall of pictures was examined in two related experiments. Extrapolating from adult research, it was predicted that categorizing pictures with respect to their semantic properties would yield greater recall than categorizing them according to their physical properties. In Experiment 1, second-grade children were exposed to 16 line drawings cross-classified to represent four taxonomic categories and four shape categories, with four instances per category. Control subjects simply looked at pictures. Semantic subjects identified each picture's semantic category, and Physical subjects identified each physical category. In Experiment 2, first graders freely sorted the pictures and were classified as Semantic or Physical sorters based on their predominant bases for sorting. Following exposure (Experiment 1) or sorting (Experiment 2), all subjects were asked to recall the picture names. Results of both experiments show that semantic classification yields greater recall than physical classification. Experiment 2 also shows that semantic sorting yields greater semantic clustering in recall and that sorting by physical category yields greater physical clustering. It was suggested that children's preferences for a mode of processing (Experiment 2) may constitute an individual difference dimension with fairly clear-cut instructional implications.     

NASA Education: Using Inquiry in the Classroom So that Students See Learning in a Whole New Light

This article addresses how NASA uses inquiry in the classroom so that students can see learning in a whole new light. The goal is to increase scientific literacy among Americans and to entice a greater number of students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Although NASA offers a diverse array of programs that incorporate inquiry learning through a well-established distribution network, this article examines two programs: the Virtual Design Center (VDC), created by the Classroom of the Future^TM, and the NASA Explorer Schools program, one of four pathfinder initiatives that the Agency launched to inspire the next generation of space explorers.     

Weeding without Walking: A Mediated Approach to List-Based Deselection

Weeding an academic library is a complicated practice that tends to arouse debate. Despite these contentions, weeding is necessary to deal with the changing needs for space in many libraries. This article describes a holistic weeding project at LaGuardia Community College Library. It reviews several approaches the project team considered and draws on research, practice, and discussion to evaluate them. It concludes that weeding requires a balance between objective rules and professional judgment. The resulting workflow uses an interactive spreadsheet to automate some of the research work involved in deciding the fate of a book, allowing librarians to practice subjective weeding without walking through the stacks.     

Gauging the gaps in student problem-solving skills: assessment of individual and group use of problem-solving strategies using online discussions

For the past 3 yr, faculty at the University of New Mexico, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology have been using interactive online Problem-Based Learning (PBL) case discussions in our large-enrollment classes. We have developed an illustrative tracking method to monitor student use of problem-solving strategies to provide targeted help to groups and to individual students. This method of assessing performance has a high interrater reliability, and senior students, with training, can serve as reliable graders. We have been able to measure improvements in many students' problem-solving strategies, but, not unexpectedly, there is a population of students who consistently apply the same failing strategy when there is no faculty intervention. This new methodology provides an effective tool to direct faculty to constructively intercede in this area of student development.