Ethnic and regional influences on teachers' evaluations of oral answers

Tape recordings were made of six white and six black ninth-grade northern boys speaking identically worded answers to typical school questions. Black students were given significantly higher grades than white students by 56 white and 50 black southern teachers. Black teachers gave significantly higher grades than white teachers, but no significant interaction was found between students' and teachers' ethnic group. The study is a partial replication of a previous study in which it was found that black students were given significantly lower grades than white students by northern white teachers.     

Republican Scientific-Medical Library, The Republic of Armenia: progress and programs

In 1990, the Republican Scientific-Medical Library (RSML) of the Ministry of Health of Armenia in collaboration with the Fund for Armenian Relief created a vision of a national library network supported by information technology. This vision incorporated four goals: (1) to develop a national resource collection of biomedical literature accessible to all health professionals, (2) to develop a national network for access to bibliographic information, (3) to develop a systematic mechanism for sharing resources, and (4) to develop a national network of health sciences libraries. During the last decade, the RSML has achieved significant progress toward all four goals and has realized its vision of becoming a fully functional national library. The RSML now provides access to the literature of the health sciences including access to the Armenian medical literature, provides education and training to health professionals and health sciences librarians, and manages a national network of libraries of the major health care institutions in Armenia. The RSML is now able to provide rapid access to the biomedical literature and train health professionals and health sciences librarians in Armenia in information system use. This paper describes the evolution of the RSML and how it was accomplished.     

Evidence for the importance of openness to experience on performance of a fluid intelligence task by physically active and inactive participants

The cross-sectional relationship between exercise training history and performance on a fluid intelligence test was examined. In addition, openness to experience was included as a potential trait-based contributor to predicting cognitive performance. Results supported past literature demonstrating that aerobically trained or active participants performed significantly better on the fluid intelligence task than aerobically untrained or inactive participants. Hierarchical regression analysis results revealed, as predicted, that openness to experience was a significant predictor of fluid intellectual performance. When entered into the hierarchical regression equation, openness to experience accounted for 16.0% of unique variance in Culture Fair Intelligence Test performance. By contrast, participants' exercise training history, which initially and significantly (p < .05) accounted for approximately 12.0% of the variance in cognitive performance, accounted for 5.0% (p > .05) after openness was entered. Participants were, on average, more open than inactive participants. Results are discussed in terms of the possible mechanisms aerobic exercise training and openness to experience share in regard to brain functioning and performance of fluid intelligence tasks. Future research is suggested that examines biological factors known to influence cognitive performance in exercise settings.