Co-ordination Within Schools,Commitment of Teachers and Students and Student Achievement

This research study investigates co-ordination strategies within schools, their relationships to both teacher and student commitment to school, and the relationship between student commitment and student achievement in Switzerland. Two different kinds of co-ordination strategies, structural and cultural, can be distinguished. Structural co-ordination strategies have to do with formal, lasting arrangements that allow an organisation to operate. These include roles, rules, procedures, and authority relations. Cultural co-ordination strategies are related to the nature of communications and the consensus on organisational goals in the school. Cultural mechanisms shape what teachers want to do. Drawn from TIMSS, the sample for the present analyses included principals, teachers and students in 178 classes at the lower secondary level in three Swiss cantons: Bale-Country, Berne and Zurich. Multiple regression analyses carried out with different indicators of teacher and student commitment to school showed that school coordination strategies can make a difference, although the effects were rather small. A further analysis that included student commitment indicators as predictors of mathematics achievement suggests that the affective/social and the cognitive domains are relatively independent at class level.     

The 2011 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science presented to George Church,Harvard Medical School

George Church receives the 2011 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science for innovative and creative contributions to genomic science, including the development of DNA sequencing technologies, and for his subsequent efforts to promote personal genomics and synthetic biology.     

Communicative Functions of the Museum Lobby

In a time with a heightened focus on how museum architecture and exhibition design shapes the museum visit, the entrance space of museums, the museum lobby, is remarkably absent from the museum literature and research. Still, the museum lobby is the first encounter visitors have with the museum and the last impression that they take home and share with others. This article analyzes museum lobbies as communication spaces in order to identify the different functions afforded by such spaces. In an explorative study of five Danish museum lobbies, we offer a preliminary categorization of these functions that can be compared at a general level. Concrete examples will be used to discuss general issues such as the adaptive borders of lobby spaces and the counteracting effects of design. We suggest that the preliminary categorization provided here can form a foundation for further studies resulting in practical suggestions for design improvements.     

Urinary catecholamine metabolites: Capillary gas chromatography method and experience with 12 cases of neuroblastoma

We propose a rapid, simple metodology for routine analysis of human urine to detect vanillylmandelic and homovanillic acid related to neuroblastoma. The assay were specific capillary gas chromatography with flame ionization detection. In this methodology an internal standard is used and the procedure involves ethyl ester formation without isolation of the compounds of interest. The run time is 36 minutes. We also report quantitative results for urinary vanillylmandelic and homovanillic acid in neuroblastoma patients, demonstrating the diagnostic value of this method.     

Disposition assessment in teacher education: A framework and instrument for assessing technology disposition

Abstract

This study proposes and verifies the concept of a technology disposition in teacher education, which is comprised of predisposition and competence. It examines the reliability and validity of a measure of the technology disposition of teacher education students, the Technology Disposition Scale for Teacher Education Students (TDS‐T). The TDS‐T is comprised of two subscales: technology predisposition and technology competence. In this study, the TDS‐T was completed by 656 teacher education students. Results showed the proposed disposition model of predisposition and competence had significant relationships with gender and class year. Male students had significantly higher overall technology disposition scores than did female students, but these differences were due to the male students' strong self‐concept, especially self‐confidence. Students technology competence level was significantly higher for seniors than for sophomores, and the overall technology disposition scores significantly increased from students' junior to senior years. The TDS‐T demonstrated content validity through factor analysis and convergent and discriminate validity through item analysis. The value for Cronbach's alpha was .93, indicating highly satisfactory reliability.