Opportunity costs associated with the provision of student services: a case study of web-based lecture technology

Universities aim to provide services that are not only beneficial to students but also efficient relative to possible alternative services. Using opportunity cost, this study considers staff and student perceptions of the usefulness and valuation of web-based lecture technology (WBLT). It reveals that a quarter of students did not use WBLT while many staff members thought WBLT had a negative impact on their face-to-face teaching. Further, over a third of students sampled said they would not be affected if WBLT were not made available and many staff members felt constrained by WBLT technology. Some staff members spent a lot of time preparing WBLT while others eschewed the technology altogether. Nevertheless, a relatively small number of students place enormous value on WBLT, as do some staff, even if only simple audio of lectures are provided. The academic policy implications of this study suggest that university provision of WBLT could take into account the opportunity cost of WBLT use as a valuation-basis, possibly recovering costs through extra fees. This would allow for improved decision-making by university administrators and facilitate a move towards a useful measurement basis of WBLT. A wider academic policy implication is to consider whether all universities should produce and deliver WBLT at all and to what extent it should encourage staff to develop enhanced WBLT. Provision of sophisticated WBLT or any other service for students bears an opportunity cost in terms of less preparation by staff for face-to-face lessons or other effective teaching or research.     

Racial/ethnic differences in Medicaid expenditures on psychotropic medications among maltreated children

This study quantifies racial/ethnic differences in Medicaid expenditures on psychotropic drugs among a national sample of children with suspected maltreatment. We linked 4,445 child participants in the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) – consisting of children investigated for suspected abuse and neglect – to their Medicaid claims obtained from 36 states. We used propensity score matching to construct a comparison group of children without known child welfare involvement, and estimated two-part generalized linear models to examine differences in annual psychotropic drug expenditures per child between children of different races/ethnicities. When compared to a matched sample of children, African American and Latino children incur $292 and $144 less expenditures on psychotropic drugs, respectively, than white children. Among NSCAW children alone, African American children display $614 less spending on psychotropic drugs when compared to white children. Racial/ethnic differences in expenditures on psychotropic drugs occur among all children on Medicaid, but the differences are especially pronounced among African American children in contact with the child welfare system. These findings demonstrate that policymakers will need to pay special attention to the needs of children of color as Medicaid expansions proceed nationwide.     

HIP HOP for HIV awareness: using hip hop culture to promote community-level HIV prevention

The goal of this paper was to determine the effectiveness of the HIP HOP for HIV Awareness intervention, an innovative model utilising an exchange of an HIV test for a hip hop concert ticket, in a metropolitan city among African American youth and young adults. A subset of intervention participants participated in standardised testing, sex education and pre/post test administration. Data were analysed to identify changes in knowledge and attitudes with respect to HIV and sexually transmitted infections pre/post the educational session. An analysis of knowledge revealed variance in the pre- and post-assessment findings among participants receiving the intervention. Level of education and gender significantly influenced the variance in knowledge discerned from the pre- and post-assessment among participants. Two three-level significant interactions emerged from the analysis of variance: knowledge, education and gender; and knowledge, education and race/ethnicity. Programme findings suggest that an increase in knowledge and improved self-perceptions related to attitudes are the result of a brief, HIV-focused community-based intervention among young adults.     

Going dark: anonymising technology in cyberspace

Anonymising technologies are cyber-tools that protect people from online surveillance, hiding who they are, what information they have stored and what websites they are looking at. Whether it is anonymising online activity through ‘TOR’ and its onion routing, 256-bit encryption on communications sent or smart phone auto-deletes, the user’s identity and activity is protected from the watchful eyes of the intelligence community. This represents a clear challenge to intelligence actors as it prevents them access to information that many would argue plays a vital part in locating and preventing threats from being realised. Moreover, such technology offers more than ordinary information protections as it erects ‘warrant-proof’ spaces, technological black boxes that no matter what some authority might deem as being legitimately searchable is protected to the extent that there are very limited or non-existent means of forcing oneself in. However, it will be argued here that not only is using such anonymising technology and its extra layer of protection people’s right, but that it is ethically mandatory. That is, due to the en masse surveillance—from both governments and corporations—coupled with people’s limited awareness and ability to comprehend such data collections, anonymising technology should be built into the fabric of cyberspace to provide a minimal set of protections over people’s information, and in doing so force the intelligence community to develop more targeted forms of data collection.     

Teacher-student discourse in active learning lectures: case studies from undergraduate physics

In this paper we develop knowledge of the discourse that takes place between teacher and students in two large undergraduate classes which use a flipped, active learning approach. In flipped classes students encounter the content through pre-class resources, freeing up class time for more active engagement with the material. This results in increased opportunities for teacher-student interactions which may be beneficial for learning. Our aim here is to explore the nature and purposes of these dialogues. Two case studies from introductory physics classes at the University of Edinburgh are analysed through a sociocultural perspective. Three main purposes of dialogues are observed: (1) Involving students in sense-making, (2) Guided expert modelling and (3) Wonderment questions. We found that the dialogues predominantly use a triadic Initiation, Response, Feedback (IRF) format and are authoritative in nature, but work together to create an interactive learning environment that can be described as ‘ideologically dialogic’     

Structural validation of three German versions of behavioral and motivational scales in high-risk sports

The aim of the present research was to validate German language versions of three inventories in high-risk sports to facilitate future research in the significant population of German speaking high-risk sports participants. We translated the Sensation Seeking, Emotion Regulation and Agency Scale (SEAS), the Risk-Taking Inventory and the Accidents and Close Calls in Sport Inventory into German, then tested the hypothesized factor structures with 719 high-risk sport participants from the European Alps using Bayesian structural equation modelling (BSEM). The final models were all good fits to the data, had good internal consistency and displayed adequate discriminant validity. All inventories displayed the same factor structure as in the English inventories bar the G?SEAS After inventory in which a three-factor model fitted better than a two-factor model. Possible reasons for this difference include differences in the sample population, translation bias, or cross-cultural differences; however it seems likely that the nuanced approach of BSEM allowed this study to disentangle emotion regulation transfer from agency transfer after participating in high-risk sport where previous attempts using other methods have failed to. This will allow future research in high-risk sport to be conducted beyond English speaking populations and more significantly, facilitate the investigation of differences between the transfer effects of agency and emotion regulation.     

Conceptualizing minimalist footwear: an objective definition

Running has been plagued with an alarmingly high incidence of injury, which has resulted in the exploration of interventions aimed at reducing the risk of running-related injury. One such intervention is the introduction of footwear that mimics barefoot running. These have been termed minimalist shoes.

Minimalist footwear aims to reduce the risk of injury by promoting adaptations in running biomechanics that have been linked to a reduction in both impact and joint forces. However, some studies have found that minimalist footwear may be beneficial to the runner as they promote favourable biomechanical adaptations, whilst other studies have found the opposite to be true.

Reasons for these conflicting results could be attributed to the lack of a definition for minimalist footwear. The aim of this review article is to provide a structural definition for minimalist footwear based on studies that have examined the influence of footwear on biomechanical variables during running.

Based on current literature, we define minimalist footwear as a shoe with a highly flexible sole and upper that weighs 200g or less, has a heel stack height of 20mm or less and a heel-toe differential of 7mm or less.     

Effect of wetted surface area on friction,pressure, wave and total drag of a kayak

Using theoretical principles, the components of drag (friction D _F, pressure D _PR and wave D _W) of a single-seat kayak were analysed. The purpose was to examine the effect of changes in wetted surface area due to changes in kayaker’s weight and the relative contribution of D _F, D _PR and D _W to the total passive drag as function of velocity. The total passive drag values were based on experimental data collected in a single-seat kayak. Three different kayaker simulated weights were tested – 65, 75 and 85 kg. D _F was the drag component that contributed the greatest percentage (between 60 and 68% at 5.56 m/s the top velocity tested) to the total passive drag for all the velocities tested and simulated weights. D _W was the most affected by the increase in kayaker’s simulated weight, mainly when comparing 65/75 to 85 kg. Results support the importance of a kayak design selection that minimises the kayak’s drag for the individual weight of the kayaker. Also, the results suggest that the path for better hydrodynamic kayak performance should seek changes that can reduce D _F, D _PR and D _W with D _F offering the most potential to reduce passive drag.     

Forgeries of Fossils in “Amber”: History,Identification and Case Studies

The appeal of ancient fossilized tree resin, or amber, has made pieces with animal and plant inclusions particularly prized. Unfortunately, amber forgeries are more convincingly and routinely made than most other kinds of fossils, by embedding organisms in natural resins (e.g., copal) or synthetic resins (especially polyester) or by filling a carved niche in a natural piece of amber with resin and a modern inclusion. The confusion of organisms in copal (forged and natural) for ones in amber has a long history. Reviewed here are simple tests for discerning forgeries and natural inclusions in both substances. We discuss an old but sophisticated technique for crafting amber forgeries from authentic amber and present several new examples from old collections in two large museum collections. Also discussed is the widespread use of polyester resin forgeries in the Dominican Republic and Mexico.