留学的可知风险(1780～1880):国家主义、国际主义与美国大学的起源

在美国从殖民地走向独立的过程中,政治领袖们常常将教育视为国家进步的工具之一.学校和学院成为培养国家认同感和民族统一的理想场所,教育的"功用"与对国家繁荣、安全、和谐的追求紧密结合.美国革命初期,民族领袖们就教育与国家发展提出了一系列提议.其中,他们着重考虑了国立大学的提议--即建立一所确保美国立于世界开化国家之列的研究生教育机构.每一个关于国立大学的提案中都包含追求国家独立与清楚认识美国与欧洲的持续联系的深层矛盾.一些人认为欧洲能提供最好的高等教育机会,另一些人则警示国人有可能遭受来自海外的政治和学术"污染".因此.美国独立战争后主要的矛盾就在于留学海外的可知风险.本文认为,1780～1800年间,阻止未来的领导者留学海外的希望是推动美国高等教育发展的主要动力.     

Regression Effects in Angoff Ratings: Examples from Credentialing Exams

This article discusses regression effects that are commonly observed in Angoff ratings where panelists tend to think that hard items are easier than they are and easy items are more difficult than they are in comparison to estimated item difficulties. Analyses of data from two credentialing exams illustrate these regression effects and the persistence of these regression effects across rounds of standard setting, even after panelists have received feedback information and have been given the opportunity to discuss their ratings. Additional analyses show that there tended to be a relationship between the average item ratings provided by panelists and the standard deviations of those item ratings and that the relationship followed a quadratic form with peak variation in average item ratings found toward the middle of the item difficulty scale. The study concludes with discussion of these findings and what they may imply for future standard settings.     

Examining How Professional Roles and Test Development Experiences Impact Angoff Ratings

An important consideration in standard setting is recruiting a group of panelists with different experiences and backgrounds to serve on the standard-setting panel. This study uses data from 14 different Angoff standard settings from a variety of medical imaging credentialing programs to examine whether people with different professional roles and test development experiences tended to recommend higher or lower cut scores or were more or less accurate in their standard-setting judgments. Results suggested that there were not any statistically significant differences for different types of panelists in terms of the cut scores they recommended or the accuracy of their judgments. Discussion of what these results may mean for panelist selection and recruitment is provided.     

Adding reagent to droplets with controlled rupture of encapsulated double emulsions

We present a method to add reagent to microfluidic droplets by enveloping them as a double emulsions in reagent-filled droplets and then rupturing them with an electric field. When the double emulsions rupture, they release their contents into the enveloping droplets, ensuring mixing with reagent while limiting cross-droplet contamination.     

Deception in Sport: A New Taxonomy of Intra-Lusory Guiles

Almost four decades ago, Kathleen Pearson examined deceptive practices in sport using a distinction between strategic and definitional deception. However, the complexity and dynamic nature of sport is not limited to this dual-categorization of deceptive acts and there are other features of deception in sport unaccounted for in Pearson's constructs. By employing Torres’s elucidation of the structure of skills and Suits's concept of the lusory-attitude, a more thorough taxonomy of in-contest sport deception will be presented. Despite the ubiquitous presence of deception in sport, few scholars have examined this concept in the sport philosophy literature since Pearson’s contribution. This paper hopes to advance a deeper understanding of deceptive practices in competitive sport and also comment on the ethical permissibility of certain sport skills from a moral perspective.     

Adjusting athletes' body mass index to better reflect adiposity in epidemiological research

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to identify when body mass index (BMI) is unlikely to be a valid measure of adiposity in athletic populations and to propose a simple adjustment that will allow the BMI of athletes to reflect the adiposity normally associated with non-athletic populations. Using data from three previously published studies containing 236 athletes from seven sports and 293 age-matched controls, the association between adiposity (sum of 4 skinfold thicknesses, in millimetres) and BMI was explored using correlation, linear regression, and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). As anticipated, there were strong positive correlations (r = 0.83 for both men and women) and slope parameters between adiposity and BMI in age-matched controls from Study 1 (all P < 0.001). The standard of sport participation reduced these associations. Of the correlations and linear-regression slope parameters between adiposity and BMI in the sports from Studies 2 and 3, although still positive in most groups, less than half of the correlations and slope parameters were statistically significant. When data from the three studies were combined, the ANCOVA identified that the BMI slope parameter of controls (5.81 mm · (kg · m^?2)^?1) was greater than the BMI slope parameter for sports (2.62 mm · (kg · m^?2)^?1) and middle-distance runners (0.94 mm · (kg · m^?2)^?1) (P < 0.001). Based on these contrasting associations, we calculated how the BMI of athletes can be adjusted to reflect the same adiposity associated with age-matched controls. This simple adjustment allows the BMI of athletes and non-athletes to be used with greater confidence when investigating the effect of BMI as a risk factor in epidemiological research.     

The moral obligation to preserve heritage through sport and recreation facilities

The preservation of heritage through renovation projects of sport and recreation facilities is a recent phenomenon. We are not generally prompted to think of sport and recreation venues as cultural objects to preserve or as hosts to heritage, yet, they appear to be significant sources of heritage for communities and fan nations (Mason et al., 2005, Rosentraub and Ijla, 2008). Noting facilities have the ability to preserve heritage, the aim of this paper is to review contemporary philosopher Peter Singer's (1993) perspective on moral obligation to highlight the potential to protect heritage through sport and recreation facility management practices. We argue that communities and constituents may have a moral obligation to preserve heritage through sport and recreation facilities due to the value they possess. Appropriately, preservation is defined and framed as a managerial activity to assure the survival social, political, and cultural records.