The Persistence of Memory: A Meditation on the Absence of Curators in a Museum Exhibition Project

Abstract Michigan—Land of Riches: Re‐Examining the Old Grand Rapids Public Museum was a month‐long temporary installation that took over the disused halls of a defunct regional natural history museum facility and proved that even the museum’s trash can be recycled for the benefit of community. A project to repurpose the old artifacts and dioramas as art involved student artists and art faculty from seven Michigan colleges, universities, and art institutions. Although the museum staff assisted with all object handling and the curatorial staff ensured that the stewardship of the collections was not compromised, the museum’s curators were absent in issues of content and interpretation. By the standards of most visitors, the participating artists, and the museum’s staff, the event was a wild success.     

Real-time measurement of thrombin generation using continuous droplet microfluidics

Thrombin, which has the leading role in the blood coagulation cascade, is an important biomarker in hemostasis and cardiovascular disease (CVD) development. In this study, a measurement system capable of continuously monitoring individual thrombin generation using droplet microfluidic technology is manipulated. The thrombin generation assay based on fluogenic substrate is performed within the droplets and the thrombin generation curve of plasma sample activated by tissue factor is measured in real-time to reflect the sample conditions dynamically. The injection of the inhibitor of thrombin generation is developed to assay the inhibited curve which relates to thrombin self-inhibition in biological systems. This microfluidic system is integrated with the microdialysis probe, which is useful to connect to the living animals for future in vivo real time thrombin measurements for rapid CVD diagnosis.     

Examining the Missing Completely at Random Mechanism in Incomplete Data Sets: A Multiple Testing Approach

A multiple testing procedure for examining implications of the missing completely at random (MCAR) mechanism in incomplete data sets is discussed. The approach uses the false discovery rate concept and is concerned with testing group differences on a set of variables. The method can be used for ascertaining violations of MCAR and disproving this mechanism in empirical behavioral and social research. The procedure can also be employed when locating violations of MCAR in observed measures is of interest. The outlined approach is illustrated with data from a cognitive intervention study.     

Reliability and Validity of Self Report of Aerobic Activity: Family Health Project

Abstract

Two studies are presented which deal with the reliability and validity of self-reports of aerobic activity. The first study compared two forms of self-report data obtained as part of a study of intervention strategy. The two forms were daily self-report and weekly retrospective report. Analyses covering the overlapping time period revealed differences in mean minutes engaged in activity, but modest and statistically significant correlations between the two forms among adults participating in the intervention group. No meaningful results were obtained among adults in the control group, nor among children in either group. The need for the development and testing of self-report forms among children was noted, and was the subject of the second study.

In Study II, six different forms on which third to sixth grade children recorded their aerobic activity were compared against two days of continuous observations of their behavior. The six forms varied along two dimensions. The first dimension varied the time period of reporting: half the forms required reporting by segments of the day; the other half allowed for reporting of the day as a whole. The second dimension varied response format: one third of the forms asked for a dichotomous (yes; no) report; one third asked for a trichotomous (no; yes, but less than 20 min; yes, for 20 min or more) report; and one third asked for reporting of precise numbers of minutes. The segmented day forms resulted in significantly higher agreement with the observers' report of activity. This finding is interpreted to be congruent with recent research on the importance of context in the recall of behavior. No effect from parental assistance in child's form completion was detected.     

Can our colleges fix our schools? three guiding maxims

Chester E. Finn, Jr., formerly assistant secretary of education, is professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University.     

Psychometric quality of a student evaluation of teaching survey in higher education

Student evaluations of teaching (SET) are used globally by higher education institutions for performance assessment of academic staff and evaluation of course quality. Higher education institutions commonly develop their own SETs to measure variables deemed relevant to them. However, ‘home-grown’ SETs are rarely assessed psychometrically. One potential consequence of this limitation is that an invalidated instrument may not provide accurate information for the intended purposes. Moreover, in the absence of psychometric assessment, the students’ voices collected by the SETs often fail to provide insight relative to their intended purpose. The present study evaluates a ‘home-grown’ SET using a Rasch model and confirmatory factor analysis. Our results identified weaknesses in two areas: the rating categories and the number of items used to measure the intended constructs. Suggestions are provided to address these weaknesses. This work provides an additional tool set for critical analysis of SET that is generally applicable for a variety of institutions, including those in Asia.     

Academic dishonesty among Hong Kong secondary school students: application of theory of planned behaviour

The theory of planned behaviour was used to examine academic dishonesty among secondary school students in Hong Kong. Participants were 386 students in Forms 1–3 (Grades 7–9). Attitudes toward cheating, perceived behavioural control, and moral obligation were positively related to the intention to cheat, but only the subjective norm against cheating was significantly related to self-reported cheating behaviour. The subjective norm was both a predictor of self-reported cheating and a moderator of the relationship between the intention to cheat and self-reported cheating: the intention predicted the behaviour only when the subjective norm against cheating was perceived to be weak.     

The wigner distribution in speech processing applications

Recently the Wigner distribution has been shown to be a potentially useful tool for analysing the time varying frequency domain phenomenon. In this paper, some of the salient features of the Wigner distribution are presented; properties of this important discrete distribution are derived, and an efficient digital implementation is presented. Effective Wigner throughput rates, in excess of those obtainable with an equivalent length FFT, are shown to be feasible. In particular, the Wigner distribution is studied in the context of enhancing speech analysis and recognition systems. It is suggested that this class of distribution is consistent with the mechanics of human speech and, using experimentation, produces a very robust spectral signature. This enriched data space can be used to uncover some frequency domain attributes of human speech which may be lost using a discrete Fourier transform.