Race as a Dimension in Children\u27s TV Advertising: The Need for More Research

Most of the current research in the area of television advertising to children deal entirely with white populations. This exclusion of black subjects exists in spite of an abundance of research in education, sociology and psychology which suggests differences in the socialization of black and white children. The present article reviews major studies of television and children and black versus white child development. The authors conclude with several suggestions for further research

Forecasting Inflation: the Relevance of Higher Moments

We provide evidence that higher moments of the relative price distribution improve out-of-sample forecasts of inflation. Further, we show how theoretically consistent higher moments can be calculated by expanding the seminal work by Theil (1967). Results presented here are of direct relevance to monetary authorities, policy analysts and academic economistsrelative price distribution, higher moments, out-of-sample inflation forecasting

Mortality from head injury over four decades in Scotland

Although the causes of head injury, the population at risk and approaches to prevention and treatment are continually evolving, there is little information about how these are reflected in patterns of mortality over time. We used population based comprehensive data uniquely available in Scotland to investigate changes in the total numbers of deaths from 1974 to 2012, as well as the rates of head injury death, from different causes, overall and in relation to age and gender. Total mortality fell from an annual average of 503 to 339 with a corresponding annual decrease in rate from 9.6 to 6.4 per 100,000 population, the decline substantially occurring between 1974 and 1990. Deaths in children fell strikingly but rose in older people. Deaths in males fell to a greater extent than females but remained at a higher rate overall. Initially, a transport accident accounted for most deaths but these fell by 80%, from 325 per year to 65 per year over the 39 year period. Deaths from falling and all other causes did not decline, coming to outnumber transport accident deaths by 1998, which accounts for the overall absence of change in total mortality in recent years. In order to reduce mortality in the future, more effective measures to prevent falls are needed and these strategies will vary in younger adults (where alcohol is often a factor), and in older adults where infirmity can be a cause. In addition, measures to sustain reductions in transport accidents need to be maintained and further developed

Middle School Pedagogical Order: Lecture or Lab?

A study was recently conducted in a suburban middle school regarding two teaching strategies. Ninety-three eighth grade students were administered a pretest regarding plate tectonics. Forty-one of the students conducted an inquiry lab; they participated in a class discussion regarding the material. Forty-two of the students first participated in a class discussion regarding plate tectonics; afterwards they completed the laboratory exercise. A posttest was administered at the conclusion of the unit. Ten students were not in attendance for both the pretest and the posttest. Statistical analysis of the 83 remaining students through the use of t-tests indicates no statistically significant performance difference on the scores of the posttest

Pilots' use of a traffic alert and collision-avoidance system (TCAS 2) in simulated air carrier operations. Volume 1: Methodology, summary and conclusions

Pilots' use of and responses to a traffic alert and collision-avoidance system (TCAS 2) in simulated air carrier line operations are described in Volume 1. TCAS 2 monitors the positions of nearby aircraft by means of transponder interrogation, and it commands a climb or descent when conflicting aircraft are projected to reach an unsafe closest point-of-approach within 20 to 25 seconds. A different level of information about the location of other air traffic was presented to each of three groups of flight crews during their execution of eight simulated air carrier flights. A fourth group of pilots flew the same segments without TCAS 2 equipment. Traffic conflicts were generated at intervals during the flights; many of the conflict aircraft were visible to the flight crews. The TCAS equipment successfully ameliorated the seriousness of all conflicts; three of four non-TCAS crews had hazardous encounters. Response times to TCAS maneuver commands did not differ as a function of the amount of information provided, nor did response accuracy. Differences in flight experience did not appear to contribute to the small performance differences observed. Pilots used the displays of conflicting traffic to maneuver to avoid unseen traffic before maneuver advisories were issued by the TCAS equipment. The results indicate: (1) that pilots utilize TCAS effectively within the response times allocated by the TCAS logic, and (2) that TCAS 2 is an effective collision avoidance device. Volume II contains the appendices referenced in Volume I, providing details of the experiment and the results, and the text of two reports written in support of the program

Pilots' use of a traffic alert and collision-avoidance system (TCAS 2) in simulated air carrier operations. Volume 2: Appendices

Pilots' use of and responses to a traffic alert and collision-avoidance system (TCAS 2) in simulated air carrier line operations are discribed in Volume 1. TCAS 2 monitors the positions of nearby aircraft by means of transponder interrogation, and it commands a climb or descent which conflicting aircraft are projected to reach an unsafe closest point-of-approach within 20 to 25 seconds. A different level of information about the location of other air traffic was presented to each of three groups of flight crews during their execution of eight simulated air carrier flights. A fourth group of pilots flew the same segments without TCAS 2 equipment. Traffic conflicts were generated at intervals during the flights; many of the conflict aircraft were visible to the flight crews. The TCAS equipment successfully ameliorated the seriousness of all conflicts; three of four non-TCAS crews had hazardous encounters. Response times to TCAS maneuver commands did not differ as a function of the amount of information provided, nor did response accuracy. Differences in flight experience did not appear to contribute to the small performance differences observed. Pilots used the displays of conflicting traffic to maneuver to avoid unseen traffic before maneuver advisories were issued by the TCAS equipment. The results indicate: (1) that pilots utilize TCAS effectively within the response times allocated by the TCAS logic, and (2) that TCAS 2 is an effective collision avoidance device. Volume 2 contains the appendices referenced in Volume 1, providing details of the experiment and the results, and the text of two reports written in support of the program

Saccadic eye movement during spaceflight

Saccadic eye movements were studied in six subjects during two Space Shuttle missions. Reaction time, peak velocity and accuracy of horizontal, visually-guided saccades were examined preflight, inflight and postflight. Conventional electro-oculography was used to record eye position, with the subjects responding to pseudo-randomly illuminated targets at 0 deg and + or - 10 deg and 20 deg visual angles. In all subjects, preflight measurements were within normal limits. Reaction time was significantly increased inflight, while peak velocity was significantly decreased. A tendency toward a greater proportion of hypometric saccades inflight was also noted. Possible explanations for these changes and possible correlations with space motion sickness are discussed

Non-Stationarity in Multisensory Neurons in the Superior Colliculus

The superior colliculus (SC) integrates information from multiple sensory modalities to facilitate the detection and localization of salient events. The efficacy of “multisensory integration” is traditionally measured by comparing the magnitude of the response elicited by a cross-modal stimulus to the responses elicited by its modality-specific component stimuli, and because there is an element of randomness in the system, these calculations are made using response values averaged over multiple stimulus presentations in an experiment. Recent evidence suggests that multisensory integration in the SC is highly plastic and these neurons adapt to specific anomalous stimulus configurations. This raises the question whether such adaptation occurs during an experiment with traditional stimulus configurations; that is, whether the state of the neuron and its integrative principles are the same at the beginning and end of the experiment, or whether they are altered as a consequence of exposure to the testing stimuli even when they are pseudo-randomly interleaved. We find that unisensory and multisensory responses do change during an experiment, and that these changes are predictable. Responses that are initially weak tend to potentiate, responses that are initially strong tend to habituate, and the efficacy of multisensory integration waxes or wanes accordingly during the experiment as predicted by the “principle of inverse effectiveness.” These changes are presumed to reflect two competing mechanisms in the SC: potentiation reflects increases in the expectation that a stimulus will occur at a given location relative to others, and habituation reflects decreases in stimulus novelty. These findings indicate plasticity in multisensory integration that allows animals to adapt to rapidly changing environmental events while suggesting important caveats in the interpretation of experimental data: the neuron studied at the beginning of an experiment is not the same at the end of it