Support for graphicacy: a review of textbooks available to accounting students

This Teaching Note reports on the support available in textbooks for graphicacy that will help students understand the complexities of graphical displays. Graphical displays play a significant role in financial reporting, and studies have found evidence of measurement distortion and selection bias. To understand the complexities of graphical displays, students need a sound understanding of graphicacy and support from the textbooks available to them to develop that understanding. The Teaching Note reports on a survey that examined the textbooks available to students attending two Scottish universities. The support of critical graphicacy skills was examined in conjunction with textbook characteristics. The survey, which was not restricted to textbooks designated as required reading, examined the textbooks for content on data measurement and graphical displays. The findings highlight a lack of support for graphicacy in the textbooks selected. The study concludes that accounting educators need to scrutinize more closely the selection of textbooks and calls for more extensive research into textbooks as a pedagogic tool

Mononuclear phagocytes have the potential for sustained hydroxyl radical production. Use of spin-trapping techniques to investigate mononuclear phagocyte free radical production

Monocytes lack lactoferrin and have much less myeloperoxidase than neutrophils. They also acquire a potential catalyst for .OH production (tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase) as they differentiate into macrophages. Consequently, the nature of free radicals produced by these cells was examined using the previously developed spin-trapping system. When stimulated with either PMA or OZ neither monocytes nor monocyte-derived macrophages (MDM) exhibited spin trap evidence of .OH formation. Pretreatment with IFN-gamma failed to induce MDM .OH production. When provided with an exogenous Fe+3 catalyst, both stimulated monocytes and MDM, but not PMN, exhibited sustained .OH production, presumably due to the absence of lactoferrin in mononuclear phagocytes. Sustained production of .OH could contribute to the microbicidal activity of mononuclear phagocytes as well as inflammatory tissue damage under in vivo conditions where catalytic Fe+3 may be present

Advances in Real-Time Database Systems Research Special Section on RTDBS of ACM SIGMOD Record 25(1), March 1996.

A Real-Time DataBase System (RTDBS) can be viewed as an amalgamation of a conventional DataBase Management System (DBMS) and a real-time system. Like a DBMS, it has to process transactions and guarantee ACID database properties. Furthermore, it has to operate in real-time, satisfying time constraints imposed on transaction commitments. A RTDBS may exist as a stand-alone system or as an embedded component in a larger multidatabase system. The publication in 1988 of a special issue of ACM SIGMOD Record on Real-Time DataBases signaled the birth of the RTDBS research area -- an area that brings together researchers from both the database and real-time systems communities. Today, almost eight years later, I am pleased to present in this special section of ACM SIGMOD Record a review of recent advances in RTDBS research. There were 18 submissions to this special section, of which eight papers were selected for inclusion to provide the readers of ACM SIGMOD Record with an overview of current and future research directions within the RTDBS community. In this paper [below], I summarize these directions and provide the reader with pointers to other publications for further information. -Azer Bestavros, Guest Edito

The role of the teachers\u27 union in the education reform debate from the perspective of the union membership

The quality of education in America\u27s public schools consistently ranks among the top concerns of the American public, government officials, and policy makers. The role of the teaching profession in these policy discussions is the subject of many studies. The teachers\u27 union, in representing the public voice of its membership, is at a crucial juncture in establishing its place at the policy table. This study was an attempt to determine whether teachers perceived a role for their union leadership in these discussions of education reform on their collective behalf. Through a qualitative research design, 25 high school teachers, representing 5 school districts in Westchester County, New York State, were interviewed regarding their views of their profession, education reform, union leadership, and the role of the union in representing teachers during discussions of educational policy. Teachers were able to articulate their views on issues of education reform, although they perceived their views to be contrary to those they believed held by many of their colleagues. Regarding the role of the union, it was established that teachers were much more knowledgeable regarding the functions of their local union leadership than they were of the teachers\u27 union at the state and national levels. Teacher perceptions of the function of the union were that the union should serve in its historical and traditional roles of negotiating contracts and protecting conditions of the work place. Teachers expressed a general lack of familiarity of the positions held by their union on questions of education reform and they frequently did not see a role for the union in these discussions, despite the efforts of some state and national union leaders to establish such a role. Teachers viewed themselves as advocates for the best interests of their students. However, they did not see the union as sharing this role, believing such a role in conflict with the union\u27s more traditional functions. The implication of this is the great challenge ahead for the union in convincing both its own membership and the public at large of its ability to assume a serious role at the public policy table