Creativity across Time and Place: life span and cross‐cultural perspectives

Creativity varies across time and place. With regard to variations across time, age‐related changes in the quantity, quality, and form of creative performance are examined. These changes are traced to a combination of cognitive, conative, and environmental variables. With regard to variations across place, the effect of cultural environment on creativity is examined. Culture is shown to influence the definition and expression of creativity, channeling creativity into certain task domains or social groups. The quantity of creative activity can be further affected by cultural features such as the value placed on conformity. Life span and cross‐cultural perspectives on creativity, it is argued, are integral to a comprehensive understanding of creativity.     

清代书院经济来源变化及其意义

中国书院需要经济依托,开始依靠上地资源的“出息”,入清一些经济发达地区,大中城市附近的书院土地的出息逐渐被房租、店租、存款利息以至自办企业的利润所替代。意味着儒与商的靠拢,预示着,书院制度本身即将产生巨大的变化     

The variability of practice in interviews used by professionals to investigate child sexual abuse.

OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to examine: (1) the variability of interview practice among professionals who interview children to investigate suspected sexual abuse; (2) the relationship between interview practice and respondent characteristics; (3) the characteristics of interviewers who used the anatomically correct dolls in the course of their interviews. METHOD: Sixty investigatory interviewers completed questionnaires focusing on professional background, training, and interview practice. RESULTS: Interview practice varied considerably and some practices were at odds with the recommendations of the literature. Most of this variability was not accounted for by the respondent variables examined. Where there was evidence for an association, the interviewers' professional background, number of interviews conducted in the previous year, and whether or not they used the anatomically correct dolls appeared to influence practice, whereas general training and specific training in child sexual abuse had no significant effect. Only a minority (36%) used the anatomically correct dolls and none of the interviewer characteristics evaluated differentiated them from non doll-users. CONCLUSIONS: In this sample interview practices varied considerably and did not appear to be influenced by the interviewer's specific or general training. Further research is needed to focus on the comparative effectiveness of different interview techniques and the comparative effectiveness of different training programs in influencing interviewing practice.     

Overcoming Obstacles to Understanding and Solving Word Problems in Mathematics

ABSTRACT The trouble students have with solving word problems often comes from the difficulty in understanding the problem structure embedded in the problem text. This research was conducted to study the interactive effects of learner and instructional variables on understanding and solving word problems among Filipino‐English bilingual grade school students in the Philippines. The results showed better understanding and solution performance (1) when problems were written in the students’ first language, (2) when the problems were re‐worded to state more explicitly the relationship among the known and unknown quantities, (3) for students in higher levels of schooling and (4) for students with higher levels of academic achievement. The effects of re‐wording were mediated by the effects of the language; and the effects of language also varied between the highand low‐achievement students. In most cases where the students’ performance improved, the improvement seems to be due to better comprehension of the text (or fewer basic comprehension errors); except with the improvement due to re‐wording, which seems to be due to fewer misinterpretation errors. The results of the study provide further support for earlier findings, but also extend and modify the theoretical ramifications of the earlier findings and point to some important implications for educational practice.     

Hugo de Vries on heredity, 1889-1903. Statistics, Mendelian laws, pangenes, mutations.

The essay describes the development of Hugo de Vries's thinking on heredity from the publication of his Intracellulare Pangenesis in 1889 to the publication of Die Mutations-theorie, Volume 2, in 1903. De Vries's work in the 1890s can be characterized as an attempt to defend his theory of pangenes, especially the fundamental and controversial idea that different characters have different material hereditary carriers. Hybridization experiments served his goal. Recently discovered research notes on hybridization from 1896 suggest that, though he was unaware of Mendel's work, De Vries used the laws of dominance and recessiveness, segregation, and independent assortment to explain the 75:25 ratio in the second generation. He had discovered these laws by applying insights from probability theory to his research. In Die Mutationstheorie De Vries combined central concepts of intracellular pangenesis and his mutation theory by modifying the meanings of important terms and introducing new states of pangenes. In his attempts to describe Mendelian crossings in terms of pangenes and mutations, he became entangled in a number of contradictions. Some of his remarks suggest that he was aware that the Mendelian laws and his own theories of pangenes and mutations could not be made consistent.     

Analyzing shear stress-induced alignment of actin filaments in endothelial cells with a microfluidic assay

The physiology of vascular endothelial cells is strongly affected by fluid shear stress on their surface. In this study, a microfluidic assay was employed to analyze the alignment of actin filaments in endothelial cells in response to shear stress. When cells were cultured in microfluidic channels and subjected to shear stress, the alignment of filaments in the channel direction was significantly higher than in static cultures. By adding inhibitory drugs, the roles of several signaling proteins in the process of alignment were determined. Thus, it is shown how microfluidic technology can be employed to provide a mechanistic insight into cell physiology.     

Whole blood pumping with a microthrottle pump

We have previously reported that microthrottle pumps (MTPs) display the capacity to pump solid phase suspensions such as polystyrene beads which prove challenging to most microfluidic pumps. In this paper we report employing a linear microthrottle pump (LMTP) to pump whole, undiluted, anticoagulated, human venous blood at 200 μl min(-1) with minimal erythrocyte lysis and no observed pump blockage. LMTPs are particularly well suited to particle suspension transport by virtue of their relatively unimpeded internal flow-path. Micropumping of whole blood represents a rigorous real-world test of cell suspension transport given blood's high cell content by volume and erythrocytes' relative fragility. A modification of the standard Drabkin method and its validation to spectrophotometrically quantify low levels of erythrocyte lysis by hemoglobin release is also reported. Erythrocyte lysis rates resulting from transport via LMTP are determined to be below one cell in 500 at a pumping rate of 102 μl min(-1).     

Small volume laboratory on a chip measurements incorporating the quartz crystal microbalance to measure the viscosity-density product of room temperature ionic liquids

A microfluidic glass chip system incorporating a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) to measure the square root of the viscosity-density product of room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) is presented. The QCM covers a central recess on a glass chip, with a seal formed by tightly clamping from above outside the sensing region. The change in resonant frequency of the QCM allows for the determination of the square root viscosity-density product of RTILs to a limit of ∼10 kg m⁻² s^−0.5. This method has reduced the sample size needed for characterization from 1.5 ml to only 30 μl and allows the measurement to be made in an enclosed system.     

Close, but not the same: Locally headquartered organizations and agglomeration economies in a declining industry

Departing from research on expanding, high-technology industries, we study the impact of agglomeration in a declining, low-technology industry. The setting is U.S. footwear manufacturing between 1975 and 1991, when import competition rendered local support critical for survival. We examine how agglomeration-related survival benefits depended upon the presence of locally headquartered manufacturing plants and whether such benefits came at the expense of other local industries. Consistent with ecological arguments, plant failure rates were higher in agglomerations but this effect was attenuated and, in some cases, reversed in agglomerations with more locally headquartered plants. Moreover, only locally headquartered plants experienced such benefits; remotely headquartered plants failed at higher rates in agglomerations. Although more footwear manufacturing jobs were retained in agglomerations with many locally headquartered plants, such locales also exhibited lower manufacturing job growth in other industries. These findings lend greater generalizability to agglomeration theories and also imply trade-offs at the community level.     

Choice of sprint start performance measure affects the performance-based ranking within a group of sprinters: which is the most appropriate measure?

Sprint start performance has previously been quantified using several different measures. This study aimed to identify whether different measures could influence the performance-based ranking within a group of 12 sprinters, and if so, to identify the most appropriate measure. None of the 10 performance measures ranked all sprinters in the same order; Spearman's rho correlations between different block phase measures ranged from 0.50 to 0.94, and between block phase measures and those obtained beyond block exit from 0.66 to 0.85. Based on the consideration of what each measure quantifies, normalised average horizontal external power was identified as the most appropriate, incorporating both block velocity and the time spent producing this velocity. The accuracy with which these data could be obtained in an externally valid field setting was assessed against force platform criterion data. For an athlete producing 678 +/- 40 W of block power, a carefully set-up manual high-speed video analysis protocol produced systematic and random errors of +5 Wand +/- 24 W, respectively. Since the choice of performance measure could affect the conclusions drawn from a technique analysis, for example the success of an intervention, it is proposed that external power is used to quantify start performance.