Full time adult credential students?instructional preferences at California State University, Long Beach: pedagogy or andragogy?

INTRODUCTIONTheimplementationofandradogy,theartandscienceofhelpingadultslearn,toenhanceadultlearninghasbeenakeyissueintheeducationandtrainingofadultsinthe21stcentury.Thesignifi-canceofthestudywastodeterminehowadultlearningprofessionalspracticeandragogyafter30yearsofitspurposefulimplementation.Andragogy,accordingtoNuckles(2000),isaconceptinadulteducationthatflowsdirectlyfromhumanisticedu-cationalphilosophy.TheandragogicalmodelwasfirstdevelopedbyEdwardLindeman(1926).MalcolmKnowles,develop…     

Activity during prior shock determines subsequent shock-elicited fighting in the rat

Two experiments investigated the relationship between activity during shock and the magnitude of subsequent impairment of shock-elicited fighting in the rat. Different levels of intra-shock activity were engendered in two ways. In Experiment 1, differing temporal forms of inescapable shock were employed to produce markedly different levels of activity. In Experiment 2, a passive-escape procedure was used to explicitly reinforce nonmovement during shock relative to a yoked, inescapable shock control. Results indicated that relative to the performance of subjects not previously shocked, fighting impairment was produced only by those prior treatments that promoted reduced intrashock activity. Since one of the prior shock treatments involved inescapable shock but the other did not, these findings may be viewed as strong support for the notion that behavior during shock, rather than uncontrollability, is the critical determinant of the observed impairment effects. There was some suggestion in both studies that shock treatments that resulted in sustained or increased intrashock activity tended to produce augmentation of fighting. Both inhibitory and facilitative effects of prior shock exposure are discussed in terms of an interacting response theory of shock treatment effects.     

Print Media (Books)

Victor Strauss' The Printing Industry: An Introduction to its Many Branches, Processes and Products New York: Bowker, 1967— $24.50).

Charles B. Anderson (ed.) Bookselling in America and the World: Some Observations and Recollections (New York: quadrangle, 1975—$9.50).

Richard Armour's The Happy Bookers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976—$6.95)     

Using rating matrix compression techniques to speed up collaborative recommendations

Collaborative filtering is a popular recommendation technique. Although researchers have focused on the accuracy of the recommendations, real applications also need efficient algorithms. An index structure can be used to store the rating matrix and compute recommendations very fast. In this paper we study how compression techniques can reduce the size of this index structure and, at the same time, speed up recommendations. We show how coding techniques commonly used in Information Retrieval can be effectively applied to collaborative filtering, reducing the matrix size up to 75 %, and almost doubling the recommendation speed. Additionally, we propose a novel identifier reassignment technique, that achieves high compression rates, reducing by 40 % the size of an already compressed matrix. It is a very simple approach based on assigning the smallest identifiers to the items and users with the highest number of ratings, and it can be efficiently computed using a two pass indexing. The usage of the proposed compression techniques can significantly reduce the storage and time costs of recommender systems, which are two important factors in many real applications.     

A Global Investigation of Granger Causality between Information Infrastructure Investment and Service-Sector Growth

Over the past two decades, both developed and developing countries have been investing a significant portion of their resources in the creation of an information infrastructure. However, speculation abounds regarding the efficacy of information infrastructure investments, especially when the opportunity cost for investing in information technology (IT) is measurably high among developing nations. This longitudinal study introduces and explores infrastructure development and service-sector growth as key metrics for IT investment success. It also traces the notional evidence of IT infrastructure development as mediating the causal relationship between information infrastructure investments and service-sector growth. Using data from low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries, the mediating and lagged impact of information infrastructure on service-sector growth reveals that information infrastructure development does play a significant role as a mediator. It points out that information infrastructure investments can be a misleading causal antecedent if countries fail to develop their infrastructure. It also provides evidence of a recursive relationship between infrastructure development and service-sector growth. An exploratory time-series analysis across different country categories suggests that information infrastructures must be properly developed to reconcile the paradox. In addition, exploratory tests reveal a distinct divergence between infrastructure investments and infrastructure development among different country tiers.     

The development that leads to the Cloud Computing Business Framework

The Cloud Computing Business Framework (CCBF) is proposed to help organisations achieve good Cloud design, deployment, migration and services. There are four key areas to be addressed: (i) Classification; (ii) Organisational Sustainability Modelling (OSM); (iii) Service Portability and (iv) Linkage. Each area's focus is described, and we explain how each fits into the CCBF and work altogether. The process that leads the CCBF is supported by literature, case studies, where examples in each CCBF key area are used to illustrate its effectiveness and contributions to organisations adopting it. CCBF has been used in several organisations offering added values and positive impacts.     

A Theory of Sport and Politics

The study of international relations purports to explain how nation-states and individuals interact around the globe. Yet one major area of such interaction – international sport – remains exceedingly understudied. This in spite of the fact that countries have gone to war over sport, fought for sovereign recognition through sport, and that citizens around the world have it as a daily part of their lives. Indeed it is astounding that a phenomenon that matters so much has been so little studied by a field that purports to explain relations between states and humans around the world. These deficiencies became more apparent in 2008 when we witnessed the world's biggest country hosting the world's biggest sporting event. The Beijing Olympics, though entertaining and exciting, showed how little we have thought about the link between sport and international politics. This article introduces a framework for understanding the link between sport and politics. Its point of entry is to argue that many of the questions about how China portrayed itself during the Olympics and whether the Games marked China's rise as a responsible power cannot be answered without first understanding how sport in general is related to a country's political development, and its sense of nationhood. My arguments do not represent new breakthroughs in political science, rather I attempt merely to offer a systematic way of thinking about how sports and the Olympics matter in world politics through three inter-related causal pathways relating to a country's sense of self, its diplomacy, and its capacity for change.     

Transient VO2 Characteristics in Children at the Onset of Steady-Rate Exercise

Abstract

The transient oxygen uptake (VO₂) response during the initial phase of exercise was investigated in 28 children (mean age ± SD = 10.2 ± 2.28 years) during constant load submaximum bicycle ergometer exercise (mean power output ± SD = 56 ± 4.0 watts; mean VO₂ ± SD = .92 ± .141 [mdot] min^-1). The VO₂ half-time (VO₂ - t½) averaged (± SD) 34.8 (± 12.70) sec which is similar to that observed in adults. Examination of the VO₂-t ½ response as it related to age (7 to 14 years) showed that younger children attained steady-rate VO₂ more quickly than older children (r = .77 between age and VO₂-t½, P < .05). Body size, maturational level, exercise intensity, cardiorespiratory factors, and anaerobic potential are suggested as possible factors accounting for the positive age vs VO₂-t ½ relationship.     

Some assembly required: How scientific explanations are constructed during clinical interviews

This article is concerned with commonsense science knowledge, the informally gained knowledge of the natural world that students possess prior to formal instruction in a scientific discipline. Although commonsense science has been the focus of substantial study for more than two decades, there are still profound disagreements about its nature and origin, and its role in science learning. What is the reason that it has been so difficult to reach consensus? We believe that the problems run deep; there are difficulties both with how the field has framed questions and the way that it has gone about seeking answers. In order to make progress, we believe it will be helpful to focus on one type of research instrument—the clinical interview—that is employed in the study of commonsense science. More specifically, we argue that we should seek to understand and model, on a moment‐by‐moment basis, student reasoning as it occurs in the interviews employed to study commonsense science. To illustrate and support this claim, we draw on a corpus of interviews with middle school students in which the students were asked questions pertaining to the seasons and climate phenomena. Our analysis of this corpus is based on what we call the mode‐node framework. In this framework, student reasoning is seen as drawing on a set of knowledge elements we call nodes, and this set produces temporary explanatory structures we call dynamic mental constructs. Furthermore, the analysis of our corpus seeks to highlight certain patterns of student reasoning that occur during interviews, patterns in what we call conceptual dynamics. These include patterns in which students can be seen to search through available knowledge (nodes), in which they assemble nodes into an explanation, and in which they converge on and shift among alternative explanations. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 166–198, 2012