Protagonist gender as a design variable in adapting mathematics story problems to learner interests

Junior-high students solved mathematics story problems featuring a male protagonist, a female protagonist, or both. A total of 252 eighth-graders from a rural school and a suburban school participated. Females and especially males strongly preferred own-gender over opposite-gender protagonists. Female performance exceeded male performance overall, regardless of protagonist gender. For the rural sample only, and more so for high-ability than low-ability students, performance was higher for those who received preferred-protagonist problems. Problem-solving performance was strongly related to standardized mathematics achievement scores, but was not significantly related to race or socioeconomic status. The implications of the findings for using preferred contexts as a basis for instructional adaptation in mathematics education are discussed.     

Finding Pure Submodels for Improved Differentiation of Bifactor and Second-Order Models

Several studies have indicated that bifactor models fit a broad range of psychometric data better than alternative multidimensional models such as second-order models (e.g., Carnivez, 2016; Gignac, 2016; Rodriguez, Reise, & Haviland, 2016). Murray and Johnson (2013) and Gignac (2016) argued that this phenomenon is partially due to unmodeled complexities (e.g., unmodeled cross-factor loadings) that induce a bias in standard statistical measures that favors bifactor models over second-order models. We extend the Murray and Johnson simulation studies to show how the ability to distinguish second-order and bifactor models diminishes as the amount of unmodeled complexity increases. By using theorems about rank constraints on the covariance matrix to find submodels of measurement models that have less unmodeled complexity, we are able to reduce the statistical bias in favor of bifactor models; this allows researchers to reliably distinguish between bifactor and second-order models.     

Oscillation and Complexity in Early Infant Behavior

Cyclic fluctuation is a ubiquitous property of spontaneous motor activity in the human fetus and neonate. Oscillation occurs on the scale of minutes, and irregularity is one of its most characteristic properties. To determine whether cyclic motor activity (CM) persists beyound the neonatal period (1 month after birth), and beyound what has been called the period of the fetus ex utero (2–3 months after birth), 30 infants were studied at monthly intervals from 1 to 4 months after birth during active sleep and awake. Spectral analysis was used to quantify the rate, strength, and irregularity of CM. To examine the characteristic irregularity of awake CM more closely, a nonlinear forecasting technique, developed to study chaotic dynamics in other fields, was used to estimate the predictability of spontaneous movement in a state space reconstructed from the time series. The rate and irregularity of CM during active sleep and awake, and its strength during active sleep, did not change across the first 4 postnatal months. However, there was a pronounced drop in the strength of awake CM from 2 months onward, and a concurrent increase in the broad-band power of fluctuations faster than 2 cycles/min. The predictability of awake CM also dropped abruptly between 1 and 2 months, especially for prediction intervals less than 20 sec. The changes at 2 months reflect the introduction of a source of variation with a shorter time constant than fetal-neonatal CM, and which is specific to awake periods. The source of these effects may be moment-to-moment interactions between CM and attention.     

TPC Program Snapshots: Developing Curricula and Addressing Challenges

This article reports results from a survey of US technical and professional communication undergraduate programs concerning core concepts emphasized and most commonly taught procedures, skills, and tools. Snapshot views of current programs are derived from the results, and the developmental processes and directions of four new programs are described in more detail. The article concludes with challenges for programs to maintain humanistic concerns while also providing effective professional and technical preparation.     

Personalizing context in teaching mathematical concepts: Teacher-managed and computer-assisted models

The present paper examines a strategy intended to facilitate mathematics learning by adapting the context of instructional material to students’ backgrounds and interests. In four validation studies, the strategy was implemented through teacher management, using college students learning statistical probability rules as subjects. Achievement and attitude outcomes consistently favored treatment groups who received the adaptive contexts over control groups. The culmination of this research is the development of a computer-assisted model to increase the strategy’s practicality and sensitivity to learner differences. The computer model uses stored information about each student to personalize explanations and story examples on a fractions unit.     

膝骨关节炎患者全血白细胞线粒体DNA复制数量和血浆炎性细胞因子的相关性研究（英文）

目的:本实验研究全血白细胞线粒体DNA复制数量(mtDNACN)和血浆炎性细胞因子在膝骨关节炎患者中的变化和其相关性。创新点:探讨了老年(50~80岁)膝骨关节炎患者白细胞mtDNACN和血浆炎性细胞因子水平及二者的关系。方法:分别收集膝骨关节炎组和对照组血液样本并对膝关节评分(Kellgren-Lawren grading)。使用实时定量聚合酶链反应(qRT-PCR)检测相对mtDNACN;使用多重免疫分析(multiplex immunoassay)测定血浆中10种炎性细胞因子水平;应用线性相关、Logistic回归和主成分分析(PCA)揭示骨关节炎白细胞mtDNACN和血浆炎性细胞因子的相关性。结论:血浆中白介素4(IL-4)、IL-6和全血白细胞mtDNACN可能是膝骨关节炎有效的生物标志物;IL-5则对mtDNACN减少具有潜在的影响。     

Cyclic activity changes during extinction in rats: A potential model of depression

Rats’ open-field activity immediately following extinction trials in a runway rose sharply from baseline, then dropped below baseline, and finally recovered. There was no discernible relationship between activity levels and runway performance during acquisition or extinction. The data confirm a theory that a sequence of invigoration, depression, and recovery of noninstrumental locomotor activity (an “incentive-disengagement cycle”) may regularly accompany incentive loss, including experimental extinction.     

Engaged environmental science for underserved youth

Abstract

The National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences has called for targeted efforts to engage underserved youth in environmental education programs that support environmental literacy and contribute to the development of a diverse workforce pipeline for environmental science-related occupations. Evidence suggests that career knowledge among low income and minority youth is more likely to be incompatible with post-secondary educational opportunities than other racial and ethnic groups. One approach to attenuating discordant college and career expectations among underserved youth is building networks for information sharing between secondary and post-secondary students. The purpose of this commentary is to describe the development and implementation of a high school curriculum on environmental science and environmental justice by Texas A&M University in collaboration with community engagement partners, students, and teachers at Furr High School, an innovative XQ Super School in Houston, Texas.