The context dependence of physics identity: Examining the role of performance/competence,recognition, interest,and sense of belonging for lower and upper female physics undergraduates

While there is a growing body of work that examines disciplinary identity development, unlike qualitative work in this area, quantitative research has not fully incorporated the importance of different contexts, nor has it uniquely focused on underrepresented groups (in this case, women in physics). This study examines how the constructs posited by prior work as important for physics identity, as well as an additional theorized construct, may interrelate and affect female students' physics identity differently depending on the context. Context in this study refers to two different experiential levels in college. The constructs examined include performance/competence, recognition, and interest, as well as sense of belonging. In particular, we used structural equation modeling to examine the effect that these constructs have on the physics identity of two groups of female physics undergraduates: first year students and senior year students. The results reveal that the relationship of the theorized constructs with physics identity vary between the two groups as well as compared to prior research with broad college student populations (not just physics majors). Unlike broad college student populations, for our sample of female physics undergraduates, interest did not have a direct effect on physics identity while sense of belonging was significant only for senior year students. These results exemplify the importance of examining context or different types of student experiences when studying disciplinary identity development rather than generalizing previous frameworks to all contexts.     

Determinants of R&D investment: The Extreme-Bounds-Analysis approach applied to 26 OECD countries

This paper investigates the determinants of R&D investment at the national level with an emphasis on the roles of patent rights protection, international technology transfer through trade and FDI, and economic growth, in addition to the essentials of human capital accumulation and the number of scientific researchers. The Extreme-Bounds-Analysis (EBA) approach is applied to examine the robustness and sensitivity of these factors.The results of the EBA tests on data from 26 OECD countries from 1996 to 2006 showed that tertiary education and the proportion of scientific researchers in a country were robust determinants that had positive effects on R&D intensity. Foreign technology inflows had a robust and negative impact on domestic R&D. Patent rights protection and the income growth rate are fragile determinants of R&D investment.     

Differential reinforcement and resistance to change of divided-attention performance

Behavioral momentum theory provides a framework for understanding how conditions of reinforcement influence instrumental response strength under conditions of disruption (i.e., resistance to change). The present experiment examined resistance to change of divided-attention performance when different overall probabilities of reinforcement were arranged across two components of a multiple schedule. Pigeons responded in a delayed-matching-to-sample procedure with compound samples (color + line orientation) and element comparisons (two colors or two line orientations). Reinforcement ratios of 1:9, 1:1, and 9:1 for accurate matches on the two types of comparison trials were examined across conditions using reinforcement probabilities (color/lines) of .9/.1, .5/.5, and .1/.9 in the rich component and .18/.02, .1/.1, and .02/.18 in the lean component. Relative accuracy with color and line comparisons was an orderly function of relative reinforcement, but this relation did not depend on the overall rate of reinforcement between components. The resistance to change of divided-attention performance was greater for both trial types in the rich component with presession feeding and extinction, but not with decreases in sample duration. These findings suggest promise for the applicability of quantitative models of operant behavior to divided-attention performance, but they highlight the need to further explore conditions impacting the resistance to change of attending.     

Summarizing Similarities and Differences Among Related Documents

In many modern information retrieval applications, a common problem which arises is the existence of multiple documents covering similar information, as in the case of multiple news stories about an event or a sequence of events. A particular challenge for text summarization is to be able to summarize the similarities and differences in information content among these documents. The approach described here exploits the results of recent progress in information extraction to represent salient units of text and their relationships. By exploiting meaningful relations between units based on an analysis of text cohesion and the context in which the comparison is desired, the summarizer can pinpoint similarities and differences, and align text segments. In evaluation experiments, these techniques for exploiting cohesion relations result in summaries which (i) help users more quickly complete a retrieval task (ii) result in improved alignment accuracy over baselines, and (iii) improve identification of topic-relevant similarities and differences.     

An Analysis of Academic Library Web Pages for Faculty

Web sites are increasingly used by academic libraries to promote key services and collections to teaching faculty. This study analyzes the content, location, language, and technological features of fifty-four academic library Web pages designed especially for faculty to expose patterns in the development of these pages.     

Functional fragmentation in city hall and Twitter communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Atlanta,San Francisco,and Washington,DC

The organization of city government into specialized departments allows cities to accomplish an array of service delivery tasks. Government reformers argue this fragmentation creates coordination challenges when problems spillover the lines of specialized agencies. Functional fragmentation also poses coordination challenges for government communication with the public through social media. The global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and COVID-19 disease provide an opportunity to investigate the consequences of functional fragmentation in city government for social media communication about public health and pandemic response. A comparative case analysis of three cities using data from city agency Twitter accounts and key informant interviews demonstrates the consequences of fragmentation for internal coordination, as well as public outreach. The experiences of Atlanta, San Francisco, and Washington, DC in the early days of the pandemic provide pragmatic insights for city officials and illustrate the theoretical importance of giving attention to whole of government approaches to city social media communication.     

IDMI analysis of regional low-carbon development based on system dynamic simulation

During the decision-making process, especially in multi-disciplinary complex cases, assessment technique is needed to assist policy-makers in making the right decision. Many of such assessment techniques have been developed for policy-makers, but the inevitable subjectivity of policy-makers often becomes the main obstacle in making the right or proper policy. Interlink decision-making index （IDMI） is a newly proposed assessment method with the advantages of being simple to use and having less human interference over other methods, as it does not require a weighting process of each selection criterion. This paper implements IDMI to assist with decision-making in national or regional low-carbon development, using China as a case study. The Chinese government has annotmced its carbon emission reduction target along with other development targets by 2020. Many policy settings can be chosen in order to achieve those targets. The problem is how to determine the best setting and the means by which decision-makers can avoid subjectivity and extremes. A number of policy setting options are generated carefully by a system dynamic model under different policy scenarios. The IDMI demonstrates a perfect way to assist in selecting the ＂best＂ among all the options that can achieve the goals within the acceptable range.     

Users as service innovators: The case of banking services

Many services can be self-provided. An individual user or a user firm can, for example, choose to do its own accounting - choose to self-provide that service - instead of hiring an accounting firm to provide it. Since users can ‘serve themselves’ in many cases, it is reasonable to suspect that they can also innovate with respect to the services they self-provide - possibly without the assistance of service providers.In this paper, we conduct the first quantitative exploration of the importance of services innovation by users, focusing on the field of commercial and retail banking services. We find that 55% of today's computerized commercial banking services were first developed and implemented by non-bank firms for their own use, and 44% of today's computerized retail banking services were first developed and implemented by individual service users rather than by commercial financial service providers. Manual precursors to these services - manual procedures that carried out functions similar to computerized services in our sample - were almost always developed by users as self-services.Our empirical findings differ significantly from prevalent producer-centered views of service development. We speculate that the patterns we have observed in banking with respect to the major role of users in service development will prove to be quite general. If so, this will be an important matter: on the order of 75% of GDP in advanced economies today is derived from services. We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice in service development.     

Relational victimization: The association between recalled adolescent social experiences and emotional adjustment in early adulthood

Although the relationship between relational victimization and psychosocial adjustment in adolescence has been established, it is unknown whether it extends into early adulthood. The current retrospective study investigated the relationship between recall of adolescent relational victimization and symptoms of depression, social anxiety, and loneliness in 205 undergraduate students. The effects of gender and perceived social support on these relationships were assessed, as were the psychometric qualities of the Relational Victimization Questionnaire (RVQ). Recalled adolescent relational victimization was related to increased symptoms of depression and social anxiety; neither gender nor perceived social support affected the strength of these relationships. Results indicated that the RVQ has adequate internal consistency and a single factor structure. Implications for psychologists working with adolescents are highlighted. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Effects of participation in a martial arts–based antibullying program in elementary schools

This study evaluated the Gentle Warrior Program, a traditional martial arts–based intervention to reduce aggression in children, as it was implemented in three elementary schools. The sample consisted of 254 children in grades 3, 4, and 5 who participated in the Gentle Warrior Program as part of a larger school violence intervention. Results indicated that boys who participated in more Gentle Warrior sessions reported a lower frequency of aggression and greater frequency of helpful bystanding (i.e., helpful behavior toward victims of bullying) over time, relative to boys with less frequent participation. The effect of participation on aggression was partially mediated by empathy. The effect of participation on helpful bystanding was fully mediated by changes in student empathy. No significant results were found for girls. Results of the study provide preliminary support for the use of martial arts–based interventions to address bullying in schools for boys, by teaching empathy, self‐control, and peaceful strategies to resolve conflicts. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.