Assessing the Utility of Item Response Models: Computerized Adaptive Testing

How has Item Response Theory helped solve problems in the development and use of computer-adaptive tests? Do we need to balance item content with computer-adaptive tests? Could we use IRT to evaluate unusual responses to computer-delivered tests?     

Constructing a Landscape for Postwar Science: Roger Revelle,the Scripps Institution and the University of California,San Diego

This paper explores Roger Revelle's activities in oceanography and institution-building during and after the Second World War. In particular, it explores his shift from a wartime acceptance of science serving mission-oriented objectives, to a defence ofthe distinction between basic and applied science. For Revelle, the Federal government, and especially the military, became theguarantor of basic research in oceanography. This understanding led him to privilege military sponsorship over contract research,and the physical over the biological sciences. He drew upon that understanding to construct a unique institutional geography for science in southern California.