Online community information seeking: The queries of three communities in Southwestern Ontario

This paper presents not only mycommunityinfo.ca (MCI) as an innovative World Wide Web (WWW)-based community information (CI) site, but also how its unique approach to facilitating online CI searching on the Web reveals through empirical data how people use such information and communication technologies (ICTs) to address their everyday information needs. The geographic focus for this study is on three communities in Southwestern Ontario. MCI collects unobtrusively query data that are logged daily from its own Web site, the Web sites of three municipal governments, and one municipal agency from this region. One year’s worth of these data was supplied to determine the types of CI that are sought through Web searching. A content analysis of a large purposive sample of all of MCI’s query data reveals more specific and diverse conceptual CI needs between and within communities than those reported in other studies employing different data collection methods. As a result, using a centralized approach to online CI access via the WWW by other CI providers such as the 211 network may be a disservice to its users. Additionally, the findings demonstrate how a thorough analysis of such data may improve the informational content and overall design of municipal government Web sites. The analysis of these data also has the potential of improving current CI taxonomies.     

Stability of Inhibition in a Swedish Longitudinal Sample

2 of the major questions prompted by recent research on inhibition are: (1) Should inhibition be considered a trait dimension, or do those who manifest extreme inhibition constitute a discrete personality type? (2) Are there sex differences in stability of inhibition? We addressed these questions using mothers' ratings over 16 years and psychologists' ratings over 6 years of a Swedish longitudinal sample. From the mean of mothers' 18- and 24-month ratings and the mean of psychologists' 18- and 24-month ratings, we predicted later ratings through 16 years. We performed these analyses for children constituting the extreme 10%–15% from each end of the distribution and then for children not rated as extreme. Ratings were more stable for children in the extreme groups than for those in the nonextreme groups through 6 years; however, only for the inhibited girls did early inhibition predict inhibition into adolescence. We conclude that culturally shared notions of gender-appropriate behavior influence the stability of inhibition.     

Book Reviews

A Century of Science Publishing: A Collection of Essays Edited by E.H. Fredriksson Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2001. US$49/€44/€31 A User's Guide to Copyright, 6th edn Michael Flint, Nick Fitzpatrick and Clive Thorne Tottell Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1845920686, 639 pp., paperback, £78 Publishing Law, 3rd edn Hugh Jones and Christopher Benson Taylor and Francis, 2006 ISBN 0 415 38427 3 Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers , 7th edn Style Manual Committee, Council of Science Editors Council of Science Editors in cooperation with The Rockefeller University Press, 2006, xvi + 659 pp. Hardback. ISBN 0‐9779665‐0‐X The Trouble with Medical Journals Richard Smith Royal Society of Medicine, 2006, ISBN 1 85315 673 6, 292pp., £19.95     

Exercise and working memory: an individual differences investigation

In the current work we asked whether executive function, as measured by tests of working memory capacity, might benefit from an acute bout of exercise and, more specifically, whether individuals who are lower or higher in working memory to begin with would be more or less affected by an exercise manipulation. Healthy adults completed working memory measures in a nonexercise (baseline) session and immediately following a 30-min self-paced bout of exercise on a treadmill (exercise session). Sessions were conducted 1 week apart and session order was counterbalanced across participants. A significant Session x Working Memory interaction was obtained such that only those individuals lowest in working memory benefited from the exercise manipulation. This work suggests that acute bouts of exercise may be most beneficial for healthy adults whose cognitive performance is generally the lowest, and it demonstrates that the impact of exercise on cognition is not uniform across all individuals.     

Desiring machines and nomad spaces: neoliberalism,performativity and becoming in senior secondary drama classrooms

This paper explores Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis in relation to student and teacher becomings and the way these are actualised within the neoliberal and heterosexually striated spaces of the secondary school assemblage. Deleuze and Guattari considered a narrow approach to education problematic and called for creativity as a site of ‘resistance’. Drama is one subject rich with potentiality for students to strengthen their creativity and ‘speak back’ against the neoliberal project. What our research revealed is how the drama classroom is an open, dynamic space where students can embody different identities at a critical time in their adolescent development. What is delimiting about this potentiality is the proclivity of teachers and students, as desiring machines, to conform to the dominant neoliberal culture of competitive performativity. The paper proposes that schizoanalysis offers new insights for mapping complex desire-flows and embodied identities through and against the dominant performative and heterosexist culture.