Book industry statistics from the R. R. Bowker Company

The R. R. Bowker Company has been compiling and publishing statistics on the book industry for more than a century. The history of this effort is reported, with details on how the collection, classification, and publication of data have evolved. Bowker provides statistics on book title output, booksellers (retail and wholesale), and libraries. Jean Peters is the librarian at the Frederic G. Melcher Library, Cahners Publishing Company, formerly the library of the R. R. Bowker Company.     

Ensuring Content‐Area Learning by Secondary Students with Learning Disabilities

Three factors tied with secondary student success in content‐area reading are demonstrated: (a) validated teacher‐focused and student‐focused interventions, (b) integrated and comprehensive service delivery systems, and (c) well‐designed, data‐based professional developmental programs. Difficult challenges face secondary students with LD and their teachers with regard to these students’ participation and success in required general education classes. Recently, instructional methods and materials have been developed and validated for promoting these students’ success. Some of them focus on how general education teachers plan and teach their content‐area courses; others focus on giving students the strategies they need to respond independently to the demands of their courses. This article describes these instructional methods, a service‐delivery model for implementing these interventions in secondary schools, and professional‐development mechanisms and administrative support that must be in place for the model to be maintained effectively.     

中国入世与传媒创新(提纲)

１．WTO与中国：挑战和机遇并存近年来，中国已崛起为世界上发展最快的大国。预期２００２年的GDP将增长７．５～８个百分点。以欧洲的视角来看，中国社会正受益于一大批受过高等教育的技艺精湛的人才，他们不畏变革，勇于创新，乐于接受新技术。在这片土地上，变革被真正地看作一个坚实的文化特征，这或许得益于古老的亚洲传统哲学。中国将接受入世的挑战。这或许是漫长和艰难的过程，但终将使中国在市场经验中受益。中国入世将为世界大国注入重要内容。２．WTO与中国传媒产业中国传媒业对世界的开放将是中国在今后的数年里面临的最大…     

Assessing the Benefits of Content Notes Enhancements for Digital Audio Resources

Our library has previously investigated the potential impact the addition of contents notes on circulation. In a subsequent study, we found contents notes were the second metadata element most heavily linked to circulation (title was first). Since there has been a marked decline in the use of print resources at our library and a corresponding increase in digital resources, we wanted to know if the addition of contents notes to records for online streaming audio files would result in a similar increase in usage. After enhancing the records, we tracked usage for a period of three months.     

Cultures of running: characteristics and determinants

Based on the studies of Mauss (1935 Mauss, M. 1935. “Les techniques du corps.” Journal de Psychologie 32: 271–293. [Google Scholar]) and Bourdieu (1980 Bourdieu, P. 1980. Le Sens pratique. Paris: Editions de Minuit. [Google Scholar]) on the determination of body techniques by culture and social background, this study seeks to describe the rules, dispositions and habits specific to different forms of athletic running. It is based on a sample of 732 athletes, all of them are the members of French athletics clubs, comprising 220 sprinters, 213 half-distance runners and 299 long-distance runners. Sports practices are different depending on sub-culture affiliation, sociological characteristics and forms of commitment. This being said, simple links between variables should not be transformed into causal connections. Before drawing such conclusions, it is important to identify the nature of the sport studied. This shows that middle-distance and long-distance enthusiasts, traditionally classified in the same family, have less, in common, than those practising sprint and middle distance. These results potentially question the methodological groups and sociological interpretations made by researchers and sports science.     

Simultaneous changes in seed size,oil content and protein content driven by selection of SWEET homologues during soybean domestication

Soybean accounts for more than half of the global production of oilseed and more than a quarter of the protein used globally for human food and animal feed. Soybean domestication involved parallel increases in seed size and oil content, and a concomitant decrease in protein content. However, science has not yet discovered whether these effects were due to selective pressure on a single gene or multiple genes. Here, re-sequencing data from >800 genotypes revealed a strong selection during soybean domestication on GmSWEET10a. The selection of GmSWEET10a conferred simultaneous increases in soybean-seed size and oil content as well as a reduction in the protein content. The result was validated using both near-isogenic lines carrying substitution of haplotype chromosomal segments and transgenic soybeans. Moreover, GmSWEET10b was found to be functionally redundant with its homologue GmSWEET10a and to be undergoing selection in current breeding, leading the the elite allele GmSWEET10b, a potential target for present-day soybean breeding. Both GmSWEET10a and GmSWEET10b were shown to transport sucrose and hexose, contributing to sugar allocation from seed coat to embryo, which consequently determines oil and protein contents and seed size in soybean. We conclude that past selection of optimal GmSWEET10a alleles drove the initial domestication of multiple soybean-seed traits and that targeted selection of the elite allele GmSWEET10b may further improve the yield and seed quality of modern soybean cultivars.     

Effects of Multimedia versus Live Professional Development on Teachers’ and Students’ Performance Related to the Question Exploration Routine

In each of two studies, teachers were randomly assigned to either a Virtual Workshop (VW) group that used a computerized professional development program or an Actual Workshop (AW) group that participated in face-to-face professional development, including discussion, feedback, and collaboration. In both studies, teachers’ posttest scores related to their knowledge of the Question Exploration Routine and their plans for using it were significantly higher than their pretest scores. In Study 2, both groups’ posttest scores with regard to implementation and planning of the routine were significantly greater than their pretest scores. There were no significant differences between the groups at posttesting on any measure. The posttest knowledge scores of the whole groups of students and the subgroups of students with LD being taught by both groups of teachers were significantly higher than their pretest scores. All teachers indicated that they were satisfied with the training and the routine. VW teachers in both studies indicated that they were satisfied with the software program.