Issues in NASA program and project management

This volume is the third in an ongoing series on aerospace project management at NASA. Articles in this volume cover the attitude of the program manager, program control and performance measurement, risk management, cost plus award fee contracting, lessons learned from the development of the Far Infrared Absolute Spectrometer (FIRAS), small projects management, and age distribution of NASA scientists and engineers. A section on resources for NASA managers rounds out the publication

The effects of extralinguistic control of comprehension and production in the non-fluent child

The present study investigated (1) the developmental sequence postulated to exist between the processes of comprehension and production, and (2) the effects of syntactic (word order), semantic (animacy of subject and object), and extra-semantic (directional correspondence between verbal and visual sentence presentations, and task complexity) variables upon comprehension and production in the non-fluent child. Fifteen nursery school children grouped in terms of age and performance on the McCarthy (1972) Scales of Children's Abilities constructed puzzles corresponding to sentences during comprehension trials, and labeled preconstructed puzzles corresponding to the same sentences during production trials

Spartan Daily, November 7, 1985

Volume 85, Issue 50https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/7371/thumbnail.jp

Algerian intonational proficiency in English: An empirical study

Rather than a thorough analysis, the present work should be regarded as a contribution to the study of intonation. More particularly, it concentrates on the intonational proficiency of a sample of Algerian speakers of English (ASE). The investigation consisted mainly of two experiments. The first one was a Production Test and aimed at gathering a speech sample of ASE, as well as a sample of native speech to be used as a control. So a test was designed and submitted to twenty ASE (ten males and ten females) and five native speakers (two males and three females). The test consisted of ten units. The first four were highly controllable and also analysed instrumentally; whereas the remaining ones were increasingly less controllable. The second experiment was a Perception Test and aimed at evaluating the data by an audience of 160 native English listeners. Here, due to the large number of utterances, only the first four units were considered. From the outset, a number of questions were raised, the most important of which are as follows. How successful do ASE manage to be in manipulating intonation so as to convey specific meanings? What are the major errors and how can they be categorized? How do ASE make Halliday's three dimensional decisions (i.e. 'tonality', 'tonicity' and 'tone')? Despite numerous errors, most Algerian utterances were correctly understood. ASE tend to divide their speech into far more intonation groups than natives do. 'Tonicity' and 'tone' errors did also occur. While attempting to answer those questions, further observations were made. The speech rhythm of the ASE tends to be syllable-timed. Rhythmic errors took place, e.g. failure to use weak forms. Short vowels tend to be lengthened. Another peculiar finding is the existence of falling and rising 'gestures' independent of nuclei. Equally peculiar is the existence of fall-level and rise- fall-level tones. Finally, the error causing the most serious communication breakdown is wrong placement of stress

College Students\u27 Understanding of Stereochemistry: Difficulties in Learning and Critical Junctures.

Because stereochemistry is an important part of both high school and college chemistry curricula, a study of difficulties experienced by students in the learning of stereochemistry was undertaken in a one-semester college organic chemistry course. This study, conducted over the course of two semesters with more than two hundred students, utilized clinical interviews, concept maps, and student journals to identify these difficulties, which were then tabulated and categorized. Although student journals were not a productive source of information, the types of difficulties that emerged from the concept maps were compared and contrasted with those that emerged from the clinical interviews. Data from the concept maps were analyzed using Kendall\u27s W, a nonparametric statistic that was deemed appropriate for determining concordance between individual concept maps. The correlation between values of Kendall\u27s W for sets of concept maps and multiple choice questions designed to evaluate the content of these same maps was determined, with values of Pearson\u27s r of .8093 (p = .051) and .7191 (p = .044) for the Fall, 1997 and Spring, 1998 semesters, respectively. These data were used to estimate the occurrence of critical junctures in the learning of stereochemistry, or points at which students must possess a certain framework of understanding of previous concepts in order to master new material (Trowbridge & Wandersee, 1994). One critical juncture was identified that occurred when the topics of enantiorners, absolute configuration, and inversion of configuration were introduced. Among the more important conclusions of this study to the learning of stereochemistry are the following. Both concept maps and interviews provided useful information regarding difficulties in the learning of stereochemistry; this information was complementary in some aspects and similar in others. Concept maps were useful in diagnosing difficulties in application of terms and definitions, whereas interviews were useful when seeking information about difficulties in the manipulation of chemical structures. Both concept maps and interviews were superior to student journals as tools to probe student difficulties in the learning of stereochemistry

Quest for survival: What comprises and effective team

The journey to thrive competitively in the millenium will demand teamwork. Historically, corporate America has had difficulty implementing teams to drive performance. In theory building effective teams seems easy but in reality putting this knowledge into practice that changes behavior and fosters learning is a difficult challenge for corporations today. Through a series of 13 interviews this study benchmarks both the service and manufacturing industry to identify the characteristics about what comprises an effective team in organizations today, how their organizational design impacts team development and the different ways that people learn, think about and understand teams in organizations. Developing a team-based learning organization requires implementing a systems approach that focuses on its leadership, cultural environment, process management, change management and knowledge management. Change leaders, continuous learning, constant communication and total commitment throughout the continuum is required to sustain the teaming journey. In an environment of constant change, organizations must have perseverance and courage to stay on course with the evolution of teams. As a result, they can expect rewards in both their profit margins as well as in creating an organizational culture that values people

Work-time underemployment and financial hardship: class inequalities and recession in the UK

The economic crisis that led to recession in the UK in 2008–9 impacted in multiple ways on work and economic life. This article examines changes to the work-time of employees. The UK stood out for its recessionary expansion of work-time underemployment. Working in a job that provides ‘too few’ hours can have serious ramifications for the economic livelihood of workers. Working-class workers are central here. Drawing on analysis of large-scale survey data, the article identifies that workers in lower level occupations experienced the most substantial post-recessionary growth in the proportions working ‘too few’ hours. Did these work-time changes narrow or widen class inequalities in feelings of financial hardship? The article concludes that although middle-class workers also saw their financial positions damaged, this so-called ‘first middle-class recession’ did not erode class inequalities in financial hardship among UK workers