Music in the air: estimating the social return to cultural amenities

If being around smart people makes us smarter and more productive, what can regions do to attract smart people? This paper considers endogenous cultural amenities as a location factor for high-skilled workers. To overcome selection in the provision of cultural amenities, we exploit variation in contemporaneous cultural amenities that is explained by the path-dependence of historical agglomerations of the cultural activities. To assess spillovers from high-skilled workers attracted by cultural amenities, we use a 1% sample drawn from the population of all West German workers under social security during the period 1975–2010. This panel of individual observations allows us to compare wages of similar individuals who work in locations with different levels of high-skilled workers who are attracted by cultural amenities. To account for non-random selection of workers among cities, we use individual-location fixed effects. Our results show that cultural amenities are an important factor in the location decision of high-skilled workers. The positive effect of the local share of high-skilled workers on unskilled, skilled and high-skilled wages indicates strong and productive spillovers.     

打印机捅出安全漏洞

管理员享用着管理更加方便的网络打印机,却不知道他们通过SNMP(简单网络管理协议),有可能打开了安全的缺口。     

Science in the 19th-century zoo

The 19th century saw the advent of the modern zoological garden. The newly founded zoos not only claimed to educate and entertain their audiences, but also to serve science by providing direct access to exotic animals. However, reality did not live up to the promise of such rhetoric. The vast majority of biologists preferred to use dead bodies as the material for their morphological research. Nevertheless, there was still a strong interaction between the zoo and science. In the debate on Darwinism, the apes in the cage played a vital role.     

The Uses and Gratifications of Media Migration: Investigating the Activities,Motivations, and Predictors of Migration Behaviors Originating in Entertainment Television

Increasingly, media consumers follow entertainment across media; migrating from one medium to the next seeking to fulfill different needs. Using survey methods (N = 444), this exploratory research examines the underlying elements of media migration by studying the uses and gratifications of migration behavior. Specifically, findings of this survey identify migration activities, motivations, and predictors of migration. Results suggest that several of the top migration activities are strongly tied to Internet use. Findings indicate that media migration is motivated by different needs, including entertainment, escape, enlightenment, and more content-congruent exposure. Finally, amidst various predictors, the need for content-congruent exposure emerged as a strong predictor of migration.     

Information Communication Technology planning in developing countries

This article explores major issues related to Information Communication Technology (ICT) in education and technology planning. Using the diffusion of innovation theory, the authors examine technology planning opportunities and challenges in Developing countries (DCs,) technology planning trends in schools, and existing technology planning models in schools districts in Dcs. Ideally, this article is intended to advance the discussion grounded on the premise that teaching is not effective without the appropriate use of information and communication technologies resources to facilitate student learning.     

Introduction of Molecular Methods into a Food Microbiology Curriculum

Maintaining current, relevant curriculum in undergraduate Food Microbiology courses is essential for training future experts in food quality and safety. Having an understanding of the fundamental techniques (for example, polymerase chain reaction [PCR]) that are used in the food industry and regulatory agencies is critical for students entering the workforce. The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of integrating molecular methods into an undergraduate Food Microbiology course in both lecture and laboratory settings. Modules on PCR and pulsed‐field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), both of which are currently used by government agencies and the food industry to investigate the presence and persistence of foodborne pathogens, were developed, introduced, and evaluated among 269 students over 4 y. Multiple teaching and learning styles were incorporated through (i) traditional lecture format on the basics of PCR and PFGE; (ii) hands‐on group activities to build upon the lecture instruction; (iii) performing PCR and PFGE in the laboratory; and (iv) group discussions to analyze results from laboratory exercises. Pre‐ and postinstruction evaluations revealed significant increases in understanding and application of both methods in lecture and laboratory settings as demonstrated by 0.60 and 0.51 mean normalized gains for respective PCR and PFGE lectures and 0.50 and 0.56 mean normalized gains in respective labs. Academic year significantly impacted score improvement, potentially due to hidden factors, such as previous exposure to material and student aptitude. This study provides the platform for successful introduction of molecular techniques in an undergraduate Food Microbiology course. The guidelines and materials developed by our group are publicly available for use by other institutions.