Rethinking the Financing of Post-Compulsory Education

Throughout the world, the financing of education is in a state of crisis, a condition made even more acute by the simultaneous appearance of a doctrinal crisis with regard to the ends and the utility of education. For European higher education, the situation calls for the diversification of funding mechanisms. The public authorities, which up until now have borne most of the burden of higher education financing, must transfer a goodly portion of the burden to users, i.e., students and parents, and to the private sector. Various methods for financial diversification are explored as well as different formulae for user-financing.     

唉!我的中国同学呀!

"双语视窗"栏目从2006年开办至今,已经走过了2年的历程,这些由在华外国友人撰写的小文章,以他们在华所见所闻为切入点,生动具体地反映出东西方观念、习俗的异同,也向我们提出了一个个既有趣又值得深思的问题。栏目一再连载得益于读者反馈中的正面回应。"不识庐山真面目,只缘身在此山中",换一个角度,从外国友人目光的折射中审视一下自己,更有助于全面地了解我们自身。同时,本栏目采用英汉对照形式,这些原汁原味的英文不仅有助于加深对作者原意的理解,也是一本学习现代英语的鲜活教材。     

Biofunctionalized nanoslits for wash-free and spatially resolved real-time sensing with full target capture

We propose biofunctionalized nanofluidic slits (nanoslits) as an effective platform for real-time fluorescence-based biosensing in a reaction-limited regime with optimized target capture efficiency. This is achieved by the drastic reduction of the diffusion length, thereby a boosted collision frequency between the target analytes and the sensor, and the size reduction of the sensing element down to the channel height comparable to the depletion layer caused by the reaction. Hybridization experiments conducted in DNA-functionalized nanoslits demonstrate the analyte depletion and the wash-free detection ∼10 times faster compared to the best microfluidic sensing platforms. The signal to background fluorescence ratio is drastically increased at lower target concentrations, in favor of low-copy number analyte analysis. Experimental and simulation results further show that biofunctionalized nanoslits provide a simple means to study reaction kinetics at the single-pixel level using conventional fluorescence microscopy with reduced optical depth.     

Informing the Development of Educational Programs to Support Older Adults in Retiring From Driving

It is clear that while transition from being a driver to being a non-driver is an important, and often negative, event in the life of older adults, there is little support available to help older adults through this transition. This study focuses on increasing our understanding of issues about driving cessation and to inform the development of educational programs to assist older adults in positively adapting to retirement from driving. A total of 201 adults over age 70 with a valid driving license completed a mailed survey containing both open and closed-ended questions. Of the 96% of participants who were current drivers, 73.4% had never considered retiring from driving. While 70.6% of participants indicated that an educational program could help people plan to retire from driving, 55.8% indicated the possibility that they would participate in such a program. Participants provided insights into the format and content of educational programs to help older adults retire from driving including coping after retirement from driving, alternative forms of transportation and how to access them, and helping to decide when to retire from driving. It is imperative for practitioners to identify ways to help older adults who are resistant to planning for retirement from driving.     

An interpretation of the effort function through the mathematical formalism of Exponential Informetric Process

Statistical distributions in the production or utilization of information are most often studied in the framework of Lotkaian informetrics. In this article, we show that an Information Production Process (IPP), traditionally characterized by Lotkaian distributions, can be fruitfully studied using the effort function, a concept introduced in an earlier article to define an Exponential Informetric Process. We thus propose replacing the concept of Lotkaian distribution by the logarithmic effort function. In particular, we show that an effort function defines an Exponential Informetric Process if its asymptotic behavior is equivalent to the logarithmic function β · Log(x) with β > 1, which is the effort function of a Lotkaian distribution.     

Guest Editorial

Editorial Board

Guest Editorial     

Proofreading by students: implications of executive and non-executive components of working memory in the detection of phonological,orthographical, and grammatical errors

Reading and Writing - The present research studied the role of the non-executive and executive components of working memory in the detection of phonological, orthographical, and grammatical...