The Warren Cup: Highlighting Hidden Histories

Contemporary artists and art galleries have been more active than museums in representing gay and lesbian culture in public spaces in recent decades. However same‐sex relationships have a long history that is reflected in the collections of museums that have material from the classical world. The culture of ancient Greece and Rome was less inhibited about the representation of sexual acts than many nineteenth‐century museums would have liked. Objects with frank images of sexual acts were discreetly censored or hidden away in secret cabinets. This article draws on one object as a case study, a Roman silver cup dated to the early years of the first century AD acquired by the British Museum in 1999. The cup is decorated with beautifully realised scenes in relief decoration which show two pairs of males engaged in love‐making, each pair consisting of one older male and a youth. The object could never have been acquired or publicly displayed earlier in the twentieth century. The vessel known as the Warren Cup (after a previous owner) provides a provocative stimulus for debate about male‐to‐male lovemaking. Discussion of the meaning of the scenes, and the possible reasons why they were represented on such a high‐status object, generates more questions than answers. This uncertainty contributes to the power of this object to open up debate. This article will raise questions for educators and students to consider about the Cup, an object which society has only recently ceased to regard as pornographic or obscene.     

Being Subjective about Autistic Thinking and Learning to Learn

In this paper, we discuss the deviant pattern of the development of thinking in autism and outline our thesis that the problem with autistic memory is in developing a personal episodic memory, and that this difficulty arises because of a deficit in the development of an experiencing self, which we have termed (after Brewer, 1986) an ‘ego‐self. We discuss constraints which we suggest result in learnable thinking skills remaining domain specific: difficulties with (i) language, (ii) coding, storage and retrieval of information and (iii) the role of emotions. We discuss what ‘improving the thinking’ of individuals with autism would entail and draw implications regarding fundamental requirements and caveats of teaching thinking for all individuals.     

Using Multidimensional Item Response Theory to Evaluate Educational and Psychological Tests

Many educational and psychological tests are inherently multidimensional, meaning these tests measure two or more dimensions or constructs. The purpose of this module is to illustrate how test practitioners and researchers can apply multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) to understand better what their tests are measuring, how accurately the different composites of ability are being assessed, and how this information can be cycled back into the test development process. Procedures for conducting MIRT analyses–from obtaining evidence that the test is multidimensional, to modeling the test as multidimensional, to illustrating the properties of multidimensional items graphically-are described from both a theoretical and a substantive basis. This module also illustrates these procedures using data from a ninth-grade mathematics achievement test. It concludes with a discussion of future directions in MIRT research.     

Documenting the world’s sociological literature:Sociological abstracts

Since its founding in 1953,Sociological Abstracts has abstracted and indexed the worldwide literature of sociology and the related social sciences. Growth and specialization within the field are reflected in the number of publications screened, the addition of new document types, the range of languages covered, and the increased specificity of indexing and classication.     

Australian PhDs by LIS educators, researchers and practitioners: Depicting diversity and demise

Analyses of more than 73,000 PhD thesis records in a comprehensive database of bibliographic records from all Australian universities from 1948 to 2006 demonstrate that PhDs on LIS-related topics reveal not only diversity of content, but also the diverse nature of the researcher's academic disciplines. This diversity includes researchers from within and outside LIS who bring to LIS–or take away–a variety of methods, approaches, theories and understandings. With 27 of Australia's 39 universities having produced LIS-related PhD graduates, the distribution through the Australian university system is evident and emphasizes the transferability of skills and knowledge which graduates bring to their work. It is possible that the diversity of researcher's disciplines, combined with the dangerously low numbers of LIS graduations, may also threaten the future of LIS research and education in Australia. Based on the findings of this study, the sustainability of LIS research and research training for the next generation in Australia is under threat.     

体育活动与老年人的抑郁:系统综述

抑郁是老年人一种常见的不良情绪，通过对描述性研究，元分析研究，流行病学研究和实验研究的综述，认为体育活动对减轻老年人的抑郁有积极作用。