Content Analysis of Pornographic Images Available on the Internet

We examined the nature and content of 150 randomly selected pornographic images available in Usenet newsgroups on the Internet in April 1994. Using content analysis, we identified themes that appear most frequently and explored differences in the type of material posted by commercial and noncommercial users. Results suggest that commercial vendors are more likely to post explicit pornographic material in public access newsgroups to attract new customers to their private, pay-per-use bulletin board services.     

Maturation of cognitive processes from late childhood to adulthood

To characterize cognitive maturation through adolescence, processing speed, voluntary response suppression, and spatial working memory were measured in 8- to 30-year-old (N = 245) healthy participants using oculomotor tasks. Development progressed with a steep initial improvement in performance followed by stabilization in adolescence. Adult-level mature performance began at approximately 15, 14, and 19 years of age for processing speed, response inhibition, and working memory, respectively. Although processes developed independently, processing speed influenced the development of working memory whereas the development of response suppression and working memory were interdependent. These results indicate that processing speed, voluntary response suppression, and working memory mature through late childhood and into adolescence. How brain maturation specific to adolescence may support cognitive maturation is discussed.     

The Spanish Version of the Empathy Questionnaire (EmQue): Evidence for Longitudinal Measurement Invariance and Relationship With Emotional Regulation

Research Findings: Empathy, or the ability to understand what others are thinking or feeling, can be observed in early developmental stages. The purpose of this study was to validate the Spanish version of the Empathy Questionnaire (EmQue) and examine its longitudinal measurement invariance (LMI) at 2 time points. Parents of 103 children completed the EmQue when their children were 3 (M = 41.76) and 4 (M = 51.65) years old. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that Grazzani, Ornaghi, Pepe, Brazzelli and Rieffe’s (2016) 3-factor model of emotional contagion (EC), attention to others’ feelings, and prosocial actions (PA) presented the best fit indices at both time points (Time 1: CFI = .931, TLI = .914, and RMSEA = .070; Time 2: CFI = .941, TLI = .935, and RMSEA = .064). Moreover, preliminary evidence was obtained for the LMI of this model. PA scores increased over time. Score reliability ranged from .60 (EC) to .83 (PA). Positive correlations were found between PA and emotional regulation at each time point and across time.Practice or Policy: The great relevance of empathy and prosocial behavior in academic achievement and psychological adjustment justifies the development of reliable instruments to evaluate these constructs from early ages.     

Advisory services and farm-level sustainability profiles: an exploration in nine European countries

Purpose: This study explores the use of advisory services by farm managers and its linkages with the economic, environmental and social performance of farms.

Design/methodology/approach: Using cluster analysis we determined groups of farms according to their sustainability performance and explored the correlations between contacts with advisory services and a set of farm-level sustainability indicators.

Findings: There exist significant differences in the number of farmers’ contacts with advisory services across countries, type of farms, farmers’ degree of agricultural education, utilized agricultural area, legal type of farm ownership and economic size of the farms. We identified three groups of farms that have different sustainability performance, are different in farm characteristics and relate differently to advisory services. The number of contacts with advisory services is positively related to the adoption of innovations, the number of information sources utilized and the adoption of farm risk management measures. We find no clear linear relationship between advisory services and environmental sustainability.

Theoretical implications: This study derives hypotheses to analyze causalities between indicators of farm-level sustainability and advisory services.

Practical implications: Results suggest the importance of taking into account the heterogeneity of farming systems for the design, targeting and evaluation of advisory services. In addition, results confirm the importance of selection of indicators that can be used in multiple sites.

Originality/value: We used a harmonized indicator of advisory services and a harmonized set of farm-level sustainability indicators in nine different EU countries that could be used to evaluate the role of advisory services in the achievement of multiple objectives in different groups of farms in multiple sites.     

The modern mathematics reform movement in Brazil and its consequences for Brazilian mathematics education

This paper reports on the conclusions drawn from an investigation of the modern mathematics reform movement in Brazil. The focus of the study was an analysis of the mechanisms of transfer of knowledge from developed to developing countries, through a case study of Brazil and its adoption of the modern mathematics curriculum.The report presented here focuses on the dynamics of the reform movement and on the consequences of the movement for Brazilian mathematics education. The movement is studied as to how ideas about modern mathematics reform were disseminated to the Brazilian mathematics education community and the consequences due to misinterpretations of the intended curriculum in the implementation process. The intent of the study is that future initiatives in curriculum change proceed more efficiently in light of previous experiences, without repeating the mistakes committed in the past.     

Collaborative online distance learning: Issues for future practice and research

This article provides an overview of issues of practice and research relating to the use of collaborative online learning in distance education (DE). It begins with an examination of the traditional problems of DE. Following that is a discussion of what collaborative online learning encompasses and a review of the primary instructional design issues that relate to it. These are: (a) course preparation; (b) creating a good social climate and sense of community; (c) the role of the instructor; (d) encouraging true collaboration; and (e) the effective use of technology. As well some of the literature relating to problem‐based learning is referenced and its application to collaborative online learning is discussed. The authors conclude that using new technologies in combination with a collaborative online learning approach in DE may prove to be highly effective when learner characteristics and the learning context are considered carefully. Recommendations for future areas of research are also provided, along with a matrix of variables that may be combined to conceptualise further study in the area.     

Resolving ambiguity in biomedical text to improve summarization

Access to the vast body of research literature that is now available on biomedicine and related fields can be improved with automatic summarization. This paper describes a summarization system for the biomedical domain that represents documents as graphs formed from concepts and relations in the UMLS Metathesaurus. This system has to deal with the ambiguities that occur in biomedical documents. We describe a variety of strategies that make use of MetaMap and Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) to accurately map biomedical documents onto UMLS Metathesaurus concepts. Evaluation is carried out using a collection of 150 biomedical scientific articles from the BioMed Central corpus. We find that using WSD improves the quality of the summaries generated.     

The intellectual labour market in developed and developing countries: Women's representation in scientific research

Women's representation in scientific research in countries with differing levels of development is analysed. The under‐representation of women in this area is worse in developed countries than in the group of semi‐industrialized and newly industrialized countries. In countries which were late to industrialize, the development of science took place at a stage when women's economic and social participation was more acceptable. Moreover, in developing countries the links between research and the productive system are weak. Both facts are connected with greater discrimination against women in scientific research in developed countries. Within the framework of long‐term economic cycles and technological change, some assumptions can be made about the future. This approach can be used to set up a theoretical framework for women's strategies.