What makes academic careers less insecure? The role of individual-level antecedents

The early stages of an academic career are fraught with insecurity. By focusing on the individual and his or her background, this article sets out to analyse and develop theories for this insecurity. We see academic career insecurity as a mix of how much someone wants to pursue a job in academia and what they feel is the probability of reaching their goal. The article draws on concepts of boundaryless careers and protean careers to theorise about the antecedents of insecurity. Empirical analysis is based on survey data from early-career researchers at a large Austrian university. The findings indicate that the most important individual factors that reduce academic career insecurity are the willingness to be geographically mobile, self-attribution of previous career success, a high proportion of working time devoted to research and networking, as well as being at an advanced career stage. The article demonstrates the potential and limits of the boundaryless and protean career concepts for studying academic careers. Practical measures are that universities should provide early-career researchers with temporal space for research and networking, facilitate stays at other universities, inform them about career success factors, and tailor faculty development programmes to the distinct stages of academic careers.     

The isolation of stimulus-reinforcer associations established with multiple schedules

Multiple schedules established stimulus-reinforcer (S-S^R) associations on baselines in which equal response rates and patterning were maintained in all components. Subsequently, stimuli associated with an increase in reinforcement but no change in ongoing response rate were compounded. For one experimental group, free-operant avoidance (FOA) was programmed in tone and in light while variable-interval (VI) food reinforcement was effective in their simultaneous absence (T + L). The opposite stimulus-schedule combinations were programmed for the other. Both groups remained in their VI components 85% of the session on schedule preference tests, and on a stimulus compounding test emitted approximately 1.5 times as many responses to tone-plus-light (T + L) as to tone or light alone. This is the first report of additive summation to combined discriminative stimuli associated with only an increase in reinforcement. Nondifferentially trained controls who had the same contingency effective in tone, light, and T + L-VI or FOA—showed neither preference among schedule components or summation during stimulus compounding, indicating that nonassociative stimulus factors made no contribution to either resultant in the experimental animals. Evidence supporting an algebraic combination of response and reinforcement associations is presented, and functional similarities between transfer-of-control studies and the stimulus compounding tests of the experimental groups in the present experiment are discussed.     

How Much Do the Effects of Education and Training Programs Vary Across Sites? Evidence From Past Multisite Randomized Trials

Multisite trials, in which individuals are randomly assigned to alternative treatment arms within sites, offer an excellent opportunity to estimate the cross-site average effect of treatment assignment (intent to treat or ITT) and the amount by which this impact varies across sites. Although both of these statistics are substantively and methodologically important, only the first has been well studied. To help fill this information gap, we estimate the cross-site standard deviation of ITT effects for a broad range of education and workforce development interventions using data from 16 large multisite randomized controlled trials. We use these findings to explore hypotheses about factors that predict the magnitude of cross-site impact variation, and we consider the implications of this variation for the statistical precision of multisite trials.     

Software for teaching physiology and biophysics

We describe a software library that we have developed to teach biophysics and physiology to undergraduate engineering and science students as well as to medical students. The library, which is under development, now includes software on: (1) the Hodgkin-Huxley model for excitation of action potentials in electrically excitable cells (such as nerve and muscle cells); (2) a random-walk model of diffusion; (3) single voltage-gated ion channels; (4) steady-state chemically mediated transport; and (5) macroscopic diffusion processes. The software is used in a variety of ways: as an integral part of lectures, as the basis of special sessions held in electronic classrooms, as a source of homework assignments, and for special projects defined by the students. We describe the software and some of the pedagogic methods we have used.     

The Nazi symbiosis: politics and human genetics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute

The case of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (KWIA), from its inception in Weimar Republic Germany to its apogee under the rule of the Third Reich, is an example of how politics and human heredity can function as mutually beneficial resources. Whether it was a result of the Nazi bureaucrats' desire to legitimize their racial policy through science, or the KWIA personnel's desire to secure more funding for their research, the symbiotic relationship that developed between human genetics and Nazi politics could help explain why many scientists in the Third Reich undertook research projects that wholly transgressed the boundaries of morally acceptable science.     

Product and Process Evaluation of Handwriting Difficulties

Handwriting is a complex human activity that entails an intricate blend of cognitive, kinesthetic, and perceptual-motor components. Children are expected to acquire a level of handwriting proficiency that enables them to make skillful use of handwriting as a tool to carry out their work at school. Poor handwriters have difficulty developing their writing skills and, as a result, often suffer in their educational and emotional development. This article highlights the importance of handwriting and reviews the development of methods used to evaluate handwriting difficulties. Included also is a discussion of methodological aspects of current handwriting evaluations and a presentation of research on the use of a computerized system that may be helpful in better understanding the handwriting process of poor writers. The article concludes by outlining future directions in handwriting evaluation that combine the assessment of the handwriting product with computerized analysis of the handwriting process.     

Solfeggio learning and the influence of a mobile application based on visual,auditory and tactile modalities

Traditional methods of learning solfeggio (music theory) generally do not take advantage of computer-based support, meaning that, when learning individually, students cannot receive instantaneous feedback on their activities. The aim of this study is to examine the effectiveness of an interactive mobile application, mySolfeggio, for learning solfeggio. Using a mobile device, students can take advantage of visual, auditory and tactile modalities to recognise musical notes. Students can also practice and learn notation, rhythm and melody, for which the mobile application provides corrective feedback. To evaluate students’ perceptions of the mobile application and its effect on knowledge, we conducted an experiment with 42 students, from 9 to 13 years old. After learning a particular song during a regular lesson, one group of students practiced it individually with only the musical notation, while the other group used both the musical notation and the mobile application. The results of the experiment illustrated only a small effect on students’ performance in singing and tapping when using the mobile application. However, they demonstrated higher scores in terms of musical intervals and rhythmic accuracy when compared to students in the control group. The students did not find the use of the application difficult, thus allowing it to be used as a tool for improvement of their homework practice.     

After the fall: Political whitewashing, professional posturing, and personal refashioning in the postwar career of Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer

Despite the numerous books and articles preoccupied with the formidable legitimizing role and unethical medical transgressions of the German human geneticist Otmar von Verschuer (1896-1969) during the Third Reich, scholars have neglected to focus on his career trajectory during the postwar period, especially in the years after he received the first chair of genetics on German soil in 1951. While an examination of von Verschuer's trials, tribulations, and ultimate triumph in post-1945 West Germany is fascinating in its own right, it also raises broader historical issues. First, it lays bare the professional posturing of German biomedical scientists as they attempted to retake control over their once tainted fields of research when Cold War realities opened a window of opportunity for them. Second, it reveals the fine line between adherence to professional ethics and disciplinary solidarity when scientists were faced with a potential outside threat to their profession. Finally, such an analysis demonstrates the macromechanics of professional refashioning on the part of the publicly tainted scientists as they forged a new symbiosis between their field and the politics of a new era in the interest of pursuing research.