Who Succeeds in STEM Studies? An Analysis of Binghamton University Undergraduate Students

Using student level data, the characteristics of STEM and Non-STEM students are examined for attributes associated with academic success. We use fixed effects models to analyze the variables’ role in attaining graduation and college GPA and find preparation and ability, as evidenced by Advanced Placement course work, mathematical ability, gender, ethnicity, high school GPA and college experience are all statistically significant indicators of success. These attributes may confer a comparative advantage to STEM students. The engineers have statistically significant differing response elasticities than the non-engineers, and show evidence of persistence that may arise from learning-by-doing. A successful engineering STEM major at Binghamton has good mathematics preparation, and disproportionately is of Asian ethnicity. Women are few in numbers as engineers. Other STEM fields see less emphasis on mathematics preparation, but more emphasis on the presence of AP course work. Women have the same presence in these other STEM fields as in the whole university

Towards a systemic research methodology in agriculture: Rethinking the role of values in science

The recent drastic development of agriculture, together with the growing societal interest in agricultural practices and their consequences, pose a challenge to agricultural science. There is a need for rethinking the general methodology of agricultural research. This paper takes some steps towards developing a systemic research methodology that can meet this challenge – a general self-reflexive methodology that forms a basis for doing holistic or (with a better term) wholeness-oriented research and provides appropriate criteria of scientific quality. From a philosophy of research perspective, science is seen as an interactive learning process with both a cognitive and a social communicative aspect. This means, first of all, that science plays a role in the world that it studies. A science that influences its own subject area, such as agricultural science, is named a systemic science. From this perspective, there is a need to reconsider the role of values in science. Science is not objective in the sense of being value-free. Values play, and ought to play, an important role in science – not only in form of constitutive values such as the norms of good science, but also in the form of contextual values that enter into the very process of science. This goes against the traditional criterion of objectivity. Therefore, reflexive objectivity is suggested as a new criterion for doing good science, along with the criterion of relevance. Reflexive objectivity implies that the communication of science must include the cognitive context, which comprises the societal, intentional, and observational context. In accordance with this, the learning process of systemic research is shown as a self-reflexive cycle that incorporates both an involved actor stance and a detached observer stance. The observer stance forms the basis for scientific communication. To this point, a unitary view of science as a learning process is employed. A second important perspective for a systemic research methodology is the relation between the actual, different, and often quite separate kinds of science. Cross-disciplinary research is hampered by the idea that reductive science is more objective, and hence more scientific, than the less reductive sciences of complex subject areas – and by the opposite idea that reductive science is necessarily reductionistic. Taking reflexive objectivity as a demarcator of good science, an inclusive framework of science can be established. The framework does not take the established division between natural, social and human science as a primary distinction of science. The major distinction is made between the empirical and normative aspects of science, corresponding to two key cognitive interests. Two general methodological dimensions, the degree of reduction of the research world and the degree of involvement in the research world, are shown to span this framework. The framework can form a basis for transdisciplinary work by way of showing the relation between more and less reductive kinds of science and between more detached and more involved kinds of science and exposing the abilities and limitations attendant on these methodological differences

He Looks Guilty : Reforming Good Character Evidence to Undercut The Presumption of Guilt.

Juries often use short-cuts to determine the character of the accused, such as their job, age, race, gender, marital status, or what the person looks like. These short-cuts often substitute for character evidence in courtrooms across the United States, adding to the divide in the criminal justice system today. This problem provides a lens to examine the character evidence rules and how they are implemented. Rules governing good and bad character evidence themselves have been turned on their head. A defendant’s right to put in good character has been called “deeply imbedded in our jurisprudence.” Nevertheless, the rules currently exclude almost all good character evidence from criminal trials. Ostensibly, defendants are protected from bad character evidence because “a defendant must be tried for what he did not for who he is.” Nevertheless, there has been tremendous growth in the introduction of uncharged bad conduct in the past decade. Character evidence must be understood in the context of the presumption of innocence. The presumption of innocence is not necessarily assured. If the accusation of criminal wrong-doing fits with stereotypes that jurors walk in with, the accusation is more likely to stick. Good criminal defense attorneys try to put on evidence that will humanize their client to the jury and reassert a presumption of innocence. Alternately, evidence of other wrong-doing often exacerbates prejudice so that jurors are even less likely to give the presumption of innocence that the law requires. To help rectify the problem of negative stereotyping, it is time to consider amending the character evidence rules

Unlocking skills in hospitals: better jobs, more care

Enabling less highly-trained hospital workers to play a bigger role could improve jobs for doctors and nurses, save public hospitals nearly $430 million a year and fund treatment for more than 85,000 extra people, argues this report. Overview Hospitals are under pressure. They face rising demand, a squeeze on funding and skills shortages in key areas. They have to change. One problem is that too many health professionals squander their valuable skills on work that other people could do. In most cases, it doesn’t take 15 years of post-school training to provide light sedation for a stable patient having a simple procedure. Nor does it take a three-year degree to help someone bathe or eat. But tradition, professional culture and industrial agreements often dictate that highly-trained health professionals spend their time doing straightforward work. This wastes money, makes professional jobs less rewarding and often does not improve care. There are many ways that hospitals can get a better match between workers and their work. This report looks at three examples. The first is using more nursing assistants to provide basic care to patients. The second is letting specialist nurses do common, low-risk procedures currently done by doctors. The third is employing more assistants to support physiotherapists and occupational therapists. These changes can maintain or improve the safety and quality of care. They are among the easiest to take up. Hospitals don’t have to be reorganised or new professions created. They would save public hospitals$430 million a year. That could fund treatment for more than 85,000 extra people. These ideas are supported by solid evidence. They have been tried successfully in Australia, with good results for patients. Hospital CEOs we surveyed for this report strongly support them. Despite all this, progress is painfully slow. Formidable barriers in the form of regulations, culture, tradition and vested interests stand in the way. We need a new mechanism to overcome these barriers – a way to get from isolated trials to broad change. Creating that mechanism is even more important than the examples in this report. People may disagree with specific examples. But no-one can argue that all hospital work is done by the right person, or that a good way currently exists to get change throughout the system. Two things are needed. Hospitals, regulators and professional bodies must improve rules and regulations. State governments must invest money and expertise in spreading good practices. If we don’t update workforce roles, there will be a cost. Hospitals already struggle to provide enough care. Waiting lists are long and demand is growing fast. It’s hard to keep some hospital workers in their jobs. Government budgets are also under pressure. If action isn’t taken to make hospitals more efficient, tougher decisions about who will miss out on care are inevitable. Current workforce roles were designed in the days of the horse and buggy. The choice to update them should be easy. It means more and better care, more rewarding jobs for hospital professionals and a more sustainable system

An evaluation of selected Tennessee Extension 4-H project literature

The purpose of this study was to evaluate existing Tennessee 4-H literature in terms of manual content, project unit division, record form utility and completeness, responsibility for manual development and handling of projects for which literature is not available. Suggested manual content and other criteria were also to be rated and ranked. Data for this study were collected by the use of a questionnaire mailed to all professional county Extension personnel doing full time or part-time youth work in FY 1975. The questionnaire was developed with the aid of a panel made up of the 4-H staff and a graduate committee. The questionnaire was sent to all 194 Agents. A total of 172, 89 percent, completed and returned them. The t-test and chi-square analyses were used. Major study findings, among others, included the following: 1. Seventeen manual content criteria formulated for agent reaction were approved. 2. Agents with more than four Honor Club initiates and Home Economic majors tended to rate manual content criteria higher. 3. Agents rated literature for five of 43 projects and activities excellent, 16 Good, 17 Fair and five Poor on quality of content. 4. Agents with Agricultural majors and with more than four years of experience rated more projects Excellent. 5. Agents preferred the eight-unit system of Project and Activity literature division and development. 6. Agents with more than four Honor Club initiates, B.S. degrees. Home Economics majors, and less than four years of Extension experience rated the eight-unit system higher. 7. Agents preferred including records in each manual for projects with manuals for each year. 8. Agents with more than four Honor Club initiates and Home Economics majors rated having record forms available for each year included in the manual higher. 9. Agents tended to rate projects having more units available higher than others. 10. Agents with four or less Honor Club initiates. Master\u27s degrees. Agriculture majors and more than four years of Extension experience tended to rate more projects higher. 11. Agents rated six projects Good, according to adequacy of record forms 28 Fair and nine Poor. 12. Master\u27s degree agents. Agriculture majors and those with four or more years of Extension experience rated more record forms available for projects Good than others. 13. More agents felt that Specialists, Agents, Volunteer leaders and 4-H members should all be involved in 4-H literature development as a group. 14. Agents with more than four years of Extension experience and Master\u27s degrees preferred Specialists and Agents be the ones to write and serve as a reading committee for 4-H literature. 15. Agents agreed generally that projects for which manuals were not available should not be offered. 16. Agents preferred using private industry and adult Extension publications on projects and activities not having literature. Implications regarding meaning of the findings and recommendations for use of findings and further research were included

Speak my language if you want my money: the impact of service language on consumer tipping behavior

OBJECTIVES The impact of language in services has mainly been studied from a perspective of perceived importance of language use. To date, research has not investigated the impact of language differences on behavioral outcomes. In this paper, we focus on one specific outcome variable; and examine how the service provider’s language use may influence consumer tipping behaviour. Investigating tipping behavior is an interesting outcome variable as consumers rarely wish to pay more when being served (Lynn and McCall, 2000). In this paper, we present three studies investigating the impact of language differences between bilingual customers and service personnel on tipping behavior. We further test the mediating effect of speech accommodation, a process in which the service provider accommodates the customer by doing or showing efforts to use the customer’s language. METHODS The three studies on tipping behaviour include two experiments and one survey with adult bilingual customers from two different countries (Belgium, Finland). The effect of language use on tipping behaviour, and the mediating effects of speech accommodation, is established through the three studies, confirming the hypotheses. RESULTS The results show that the service provider’s language use has a large and significant effect on the consumer tipping behaviour. This effect can consistently be observed in all three studies across both countries, confirming the generalizability of the results. We further establish that the impact of language differences on tipping behaviour is fully mediated by speech accommodation employed by the service provider. CONCLUSIONS Consistent across different countries and different methodologies, we find that customers who are served in their second language are less willing to tip than customers who are served in their native language. Given that tipping behavior can be considered as a proxy for service quality perceptions (Lynn, 2001; Lynn and Sturman, 2010), our findings thus suggest that restaurant visitors who are served in their second language perceive the quality of the service as low. This is an important finding as prior research focused on whether customers find it important to be served in their native language (Holmqvist, 2011), but did not focus on behavioral outcomes of these language differences. Our research has important implications for waiters and waitresses active on bilingual markets. It appears that they are able to increase their income with tips if they accommodate to the restaurant visitor’s native language. This would require waiters and waitresses to learn or enhance the second language of the market. Restaurant owners might also offer language courses to waiters and waitresses in order to make them more fluent in the different languages of the market. Doing so might be beneficial, as waiters and waitresses who receive more tips have a higher job satisfaction, and are more committed to deliver good service

Visualising interoperability : ARH, aggregation, rationalisation and harmonisation

This paper proposes a visualisation of interoperability to assist real-world deployment of metadata. For some time, resource managers in many organisations have been acting on faith, creating 'standards compliant' metadata with the aim of exposing their resources to provide interoperability in discovery activities. In some cases, their faith has led them to miss the very essence of the work they are doing, and they have not got what they worked for. The authors report a case study involving government agencies in Victoria, Australia. A number of departmental agencies have implemented, more or less, the DC-based Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) application profile, at least for their web resources. They have done this with care and precision, with the long-term aim of developing a fully interoperable system. In the case study, typical would-be records for seven government departments were studied and it was shown that the tiniest, and typical, variation in use of the standard can be expected to thwart the aimsof interoperability in significant ways. In the context of the government’s move to seeking interoperable metadata for all resources, including those within document management systems, the authors make visible how a small 'creep' can lead away from interoperability and how it might be contained in the future. They use a 3-step approach of 'aggregation, rationalisation and harmonisation' to expose the problems with 'nearly good enough' interoperability and the benefits of good interoperability, and encourage true harmonisation

Guarded Play: Multi-Tasking in Parent-Child Interactions

This brief analysis utilizes a CA perspective to deepen our understanding of the ways in which participants in interactions are able to handle more than one activity simultaneously. Many of the studies on multi-tasking, as Good (2009) noted, address this from a cognitive science perspective (e.g. Salvucci, 2005; Salvucci, Taatgen, & Kushleyeva, 2006), focusing on the brain’s ability to attend to several tasks at once. According to this work, we humans do a less than stellar job at balancing more than one thing at a time. In fact, with each task we add to the mix, our performance suffers that much more. As a social scientist, I find these conclusions enlightening and worthy of further study. As a mother, I chuckle, because even as I write this, my ear is bent to my daughter doing homework and the dinner that is on the stove, and I have gotten up from my workstation twice to wipe the bedroom wall clean of all traces of marker from my son’s dirty hands. Since at the end of the day, every member of my family is fed, cleaned, and accounted for, I proclaim that I do my job successfully. Thus, I agree wholeheartedly with the argument (Good, 2009) that by looking at the social action of multi-tasking as it happens in real time, as it happens so many nights in the lives of families, we might complicate the notion that it is something that humans simply cannot do well

MODEL PEMBELAJARAN ARIAS (ASSURANCE, RELEVANCE, INTEREST RELEVANCE, SATISFACTION) DALAM MATERI IPA BAGI SISWA TUNARUNGU SMPLB

Abstract Learning model of ARIAS (Assurance, Relevance, Interest, Assesment, Satisfaction) As a lesson that instills confidence student, relevance with a children life and happily. This research had purpose (1) to state the readiness done by the teacher in the implementation of learning model of ARIAS in science for deaf student in SMPLB Karya Mulia Surabaya. (2) To describe the learning prosses in learning model of ARIAS in science by teacher and deaf students response, and (3) to describe the obstacles experienced in applying ARIAS learning model and solution will be given. The research used descriptive method of qualitative approach. research subyect is a teacher and deaf student in class VIII of SMPLB Karya Mulia Surabaya. The technique of data collection by observation, documentation and interview, data analysis used the steps of reduction data, display data, and verification / concluding. The results of the research are (1) the readiness done by the teachers in learning model of ARIAS in science lessons to deafstudent in SMPLB Karya Mulia Surabaya was arranging the modified syllabus and RPP, teaching materials adapted to the students ability, prepairing of learning media, and making assessment sheets. (2) The learning procces in learning model of ARIAS by the teacher in science lesson to deaf student could be applied well with percentage of implementation above 80%. ARIAS learning model gets good response from students, students are more active in learning and student evaluation result shows good learning progress. (3) The obstacles is the condition of interest in learning some deaf students are volatile change. The solution is to do variations of learning activities, doing ice breaking or giving more motivation by teachers and other students. The ARIAS learning model is more readily accepted by students with high abilities than students with less ability. the solution is to give more attention to the student with less ability and give understanding to all students to be able to work together.     Keywords : Learning model of ARIAS (Assurance, Relevance, Interest, Assesment, Satisfaction), science. &nbsp

Freshman at Farquhar to Pharmacy Fellow: The Reality of the Journey and Tips for Success

The path to becoming a healthcare provider is a commitment to lifelong learning, constant hard work, and a career that is not about you. Every class you take, everything you learn, every experience you engage in is preparing you to be a competent and compassionate healthcare provider, so that one day you can walk into the room of a desperate human being and help them. The pay is average at best especially considering the years of training. People will be angry at you when you are doing your best to help them. People will be angry when you do not want to work for free, and you can expect to burn out if you are doing it for the money. However, if truly want this for whatever your one or many reasons are; it is worth it every day. For those of you who want to pursue this I will be happy to call you a colleague one day. Tips for success: Know what experiences you cannot get back. You can work and make money later. You only get one chance to make a good grade in General Chemistry 1 Be focused but flexible. If interested in pharmacy -- pursue it! Take all prerequisites to qualifiy for medical, dental, PA, etc. programs as well. Exercise reduces stress. The less time you have for it, the more you need it. Be social and stay in touch with your classmates, they\u27ll be doctors one day to