Using Smart Boards and Manipulatives in the Elementary Science Classroom

This study summarizes the results of a survey administered to 48 elementary schools in the largest school district in a southeastern U.S. state, conducted by university faculty to evaluate the use of SMART Boards and handson experiences, the objectives of which were to identify preparedness of elementary classroom teachers in teaching elementary Science, in using SMART Boards and in using manipulatives for teaching in the elementary Science classroom, as well as to identify frequency with which elementary classroom teachers use SMART Boards and/or manipulatives and reasons for using or not using SMART Boards and/ or manipulatives in the elementary Science classroom. Results of the survey will be used to address areas of needed improvement among pre-service teachers, to identify areas in which early career teachers need additional training or information and how best to improve the quality and training of the Elementary Science component of the education degree.     

早期经尿道前列腺隧道式电切治疗前列腺癌近距离照射治疗术后尿潴留(英文)

研究目的:探讨早期经尿道前列腺隧道式电切治疗前列腺癌近距离照射治疗术后尿潴留的适应症及其对近距离照射治疗疗效的影响。创新要点:前列腺癌近距离照射治疗已经成为75岁以上患者的首选,前列腺癌近距离照射治疗术后尿潴留发生率为1.5%~22.0%。经尿道前列腺电切常用于药物治疗无效的反复尿潴留患者,且手术时机多在近距离照射治疗术后6个月以后。经尿道前列腺隧道式电切治疗前列腺癌近距离照射治疗术后尿潴留可在6个月内进行,患者尿道症状从IV(出现尿潴留,需要导尿)下降为0级(没有症状)或I级(轻度,中度尿频,2~3次/晚),较术前改善明显,且对近距离照射治疗疗效无明显影响。研究方法:浙江大学医学院附属邵逸夫医院2009年2月至2013年7月间所有接受前列腺癌近距离照射治疗的病例共190例,其中9例(4.7%)患者术后出现反复尿潴留,且早期行经尿道前列腺隧道式电切术治疗,回顾分析其临床资料。重要结论:前列腺癌近距离照射治疗术后反复尿潴留,在严格防护下早期行经尿道前列腺隧道式电切是安全有效的,且电切后对近距离照射治疗疗效无明显影响。     

A Conspiracy of Fishes,or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying About #GamerGate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity

Recently, the margins between gaming and feminism have become increasingly contentious (Salter & Blodgett, 2012 Salter, A., & Blodgett, B. (2012). Hypermasculinity & Dickwolves: The contentious role of women in the new gaming public. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 56, 401–416. doi:10.1080/08838151.2012.705199[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar]). This article addresses a cultural moment where masculine gaming culture became aware of and began responding to feminist game scholars by analyzing GamerGate conspiracy documents and social media discussions related to the now infamous “DiGRA fishbowl.” Worries about the opacity of academic practices and a disparaging of feminist knowledge-making practices dominate these documents. By looking at these discussions and practices through the lens of conspiracy theories (Fenster, 2008 Fenster, M. (2008). Conspiracy theories: Secrecy and power in American culture (2nd edition). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]; Hofstadter, 1952 Hofstadter, R. (1952). The paranoid style in American politics and other essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar]) and counterknowledge (Fiske, 1994 Fiske, J. (1994). Blackstream knowledge: Genocide. In Media matters: Everyday culture and political change. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]) we consider the broader meaning of GamerGate's attention to academia.     

How the admission criteria to a competitive-entry undergraduate programme could be improved

The introduction of a new standards-based secondary school assessment system, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), necessitated significant changes to the admissions processes for New Zealand universities, particularly for competitive-entry programmes such as medicine, engineering and pharmacy. Selection to such programmes was traditionally based on marks or grades in designated science subjects. Under NCEA, the emphasis changed to the number of credits obtained. This article uses the case of pharmacy at The University of Auckland to examine whether the admission criteria under NCEA are ‘fit for purpose’ in terms of academic progression during the degree. The negative consequences of students having to repeat courses are both academic and financial. Using data from six cohorts of NCEA entrants to the Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm) degree, the findings of this study clearly suggest that the best predictor of course success, measured by not failing courses, is the NCEA Grade Point Average. This is at variance with the current practice for admission to pharmacy and other limited-entry degrees which rely on prerequisite courses and the number of NCEA Credits gained. These results suggest that a reappraisal of admissions processes for pharmacy and similar programmes is required.     

Organizational realignment case study: Adding value by analyzing performance

The U.S. Navy is a global organization with an annual budget in excess of $140 billion and employs roughly 330, 000 sailors. A multilevel adaptation of the human performance model was applied to look across organizations for functional areas where efficiencies could be gained by standardizing business practices and cooperating across organizational boundaries. The resulting 17‐to‐1 return on investment is attributed to the process of working through the model with a team of executive stakeholders.     

Disclosure and secrecy in adolescent-parent relationships

Beliefs about parents' legitimate authority and adolescents' obligations to disclose to parents and actual disclosure and secrecy in different domains were examined in 276 ethnically diverse, lower middle-class 9th and 12th graders (Ms=14.62 and 17.40 years) and their parents (n=249). Adolescents were seen as more obligated to disclose prudential issues and less obligated to disclose personal than moral, conventional, and multifaceted issues; parents viewed adolescents as more obligated to disclose to parents than adolescents perceived themselves to be. Adolescents disclosed more to mothers than to fathers, particularly regarding personal issues, but mothers overestimated girls' disclosure. Greater trust, perceived obligations to disclose, and, for personal issues, more parental acceptance and psychological control predicted more disclosure and less secrecy.     

Impact of the Friendly Schools whole-school intervention on transition to secondary school and adolescent bullying behaviour

Peer bullying increases in times of school transition, influenced by changing peer and friendship groups, new schooling environments and greater stress. Covert forms of bullying, including cyberbullying, become more common in secondary school and cause considerable distress and long-term harm. The period of transition to secondary school is therefore a critical window for intervening to manage and prevent bullying. A three-year cluster randomised control trial was conducted to develop, implement and evaluate the Friendly Schools Project intervention which aimed to reduce bullying and aggression among more than 3,000 students who had recently transitioned to secondary school. Intervention schools were provided with individualised training and resources to support students’ transition and reduce bullying using a multi-level comprehensive intervention addressing classroom curriculum, school policies and procedures, the social and physical environment, pastoral care approaches and school-home-community links. Although the observed effect sizes were small, the intervention had a consistently significant positive effect across a range of outcomes, including bullying perpetration, victimisation, depression, anxiety, stress, feelings of loneliness and perceptions of school safety at the end of the students’ first year in secondary school. However, none of these differences were sustained into the students’ second year of secondary school. These findings demonstrate the immediate value of whole-school interventions to reduce bullying behaviour and associated harms among students who have recently transitioned to secondary school, as well as the need to provide strategies that continue to support students as they progress through school, to sustain these effects.     

Stimulus space complexity determines the ratio of specialist and generalist neurons during pattern recognition

Neural processing layers built on divergent connectivity patterns display two types of stimulus-dependent responses: neurons that react to a few stimuli, specialists, and other ones that respond to a wide range of inputs, generalists. Specialists are essential for the discrimination of stimuli and generalists extract common and generic properties from them. This neural heterogeneity could have emerged because of animal adaptation to the environment. Thus, we suggest that there is a relationship between the percentage of specialists and generalists and the stimulus complexity. In order to study this possible relationship, we use patterns with different complexities in a bio-inspired neural network and calculate their classification errors for different ratios of these types of neurons. This study shows that, when the complexity of the stimuli is low, the minimum classification error is achieved with almost any specialist-generalist ratio. Thus, in this case, the role of these neurons during pattern recognition is unspecific. When this complexity is intermediate, both are needed to minimize the classification error, usually in a similar proportion. For increasing stimulus complexity, the importance of generalists decreases, until their relevance is fully nullified when the complexity is high. Therefore, if we adjust the specialist-generalist ratio to the complexity of patterns, we can build more effective neural networks for pattern recognition. Finally, we propose an estimation of stimulus complexity based on the proportion of these types of neurons observed by neural recordings. This offers the possibility to evaluate the stimulus complexity to which animals are adapted.     

Exploring Personality Profiles with Matrices

We present a short-term class project used in an introductory linear algebra course, designed to engage students in matrix algebra. In this activity, students responded to a survey of their pop culture tastes. Using the survey responses, they worked to design a series of matching algorithms, using matrices, with the goal of matching the students in the class to the person whose tastes most closely aligned with their own. The class then explored various ways of testing the quality of the match. Topics covered along the way included: symmetric matrices, vector products, and numerical interpretation of qualitative data.