Going for Broke: A Talk to Music Teachers

In 1963—a racially-charged time in the United States—James Baldwin delivered “A Talk to Teachers,” urging educators to engage youth in difficult conversations about current events. We concur with Giroux (2011, 2019) that political forces influence our educational spaces and that classrooms should not be viewed as apolitical, but instead seen as sites for engagement, where educators and artists alike can “go for broke.” Drawing upon A Tribe Called Quest’s 2017 Grammy performance of “We the People…” as an example of the role of the arts in troubled times, we consider ways to work alongside youth in schools to respond, consider, and process current events through music

Review of \u3cem\u3eVoices from the Edge: Narratives about the Americans with Disabilities Act.\u3c/em\u3e Ruth O\u27Brien. Reviewed by Juliet C. Rothman.

Book review of Ruth O\u27Brien, Voices from the Edge: Narratives about the Americans with Disabilities Act. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. $55.00 hardcover,$16.95 papercover

Generating Effective Instructions: Knowing When to Stop

One aspect of Natural Language generation is describing entities so that they are distinguished from all other entities. Entities include objects, events, actions, and states. Much attention has been paid to objects and the generation of their referring expressions (descriptions meant to pick out or refer to an entity). However, a growing area of research is the automated generation of instruction manuals and an important part of generating instructions is distinguishing the actions that are to be carried out from other possible actions. One distinguishing feature is an action\u27s termination, or when the performance of the action is to stop. My dissertation work focuses on generating action descriptions from action information using the SPUD generation algorithm developed here at Penn by Matthew Stone. In my work, I concentrate on the generation of expressions of termination information as part of action descriptions. The problems I address include how termination information is represented in action information and expressed in Natural Language, how to determine when an action description allows the reader to understand how to perform the action correctly, and how to generate the appropriate description of action information

Review of \u3cem\u3eWhy I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability.\u3c/em\u3e Paul K. Longmore. Reviewed by Juliet Rothman.

Paul K. Longmore, Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003. $69.50 papercover

Autecological studies of Drosera linearis, a threatened sundew species

The linear-leaf sundew has been extirpated from several stations at the southern edge of Its range. Cedarburg Bog is believed to harbor the largest of the remaining southern colonies of this species. Drosera linearis has a lower reproductive output at Cedarburg Bog than at other sites, and produces fewer seeds per plant than the three sundew species which share its range. The population studied at Cedarburg Bog declined in population size and reproductive output from 1980 to 1982, and revealed characteristics associated with high rates of local extinction. Populations experienced rapid turnover of individuals, and population size was closely coupled to the size of the previous year\u27s seed crop. Sustained flooding in the flarks of the patterned fen further decreased population stability. The species may have persisted at Cedarburg Bog because the patterned fen is sufficiently large to allow the recolonization rate to keep pace with the rate of local extinction

Multiple Hypothesis Testing in Microarray Experiments

DNA microarrays are a new and promising biotechnology which allows the monitoring of expression levels in cells for thousands of genes simultaneously. An important and common question in microarray experiments is the identification of differentially expressed genes, i.e., genes whose expression levels are associated with a response or covariate of interest. The biological question of differential expression can be restated as a problem in multiple hypothesis testing: the simultaneous test for each gene of the null hypothesis of no association between the expression levels and the responses or covariates. As a typical microarray experiment measures expression levels for thousands of genes simultaneously, large multiplicity problems are generated. This article discusses different approaches to multiple hypothesis testing in the context of microarray experiments and compares the procedures on microarray and simulated datasets

Women Media Practitioners: The Endangered Stakeholders in the Kenyan Media Arena

Knowledge and information are necessary bonding agents for human development and progress. Those with greater capacity to create, access and disseminate knowledge and information ultimately gain a competitive edge in society. The Media is an organ charged with the responsibility for educating, entertaining and informing society. Media professionals in Africa and Kenya in particular, face challenges in the course of their work. Women media practitioners face unique challenges in a field that is largely dominated by men. These challenges have resulted in gender abuse and violation of media ethics. The aim of this study was to investigate the challenges faced by women media practitioners in Kenya, with a view to suggesting lasting solutions to these problems. The specific objectives were to: identify the media specializations in Kenya; identify specific media professions in which women have ventured; identify media professions that are largely male-dominated; assess the performance of women media practitioners in comparison to their male counterparts; identify challenges faced by women media practitioners and; suggest possible solutions to these challenges. The study was qualitative in nature and questionnaires were administered to purposively selected respondents. The target population constituted female news anchors, reporters, program producers, editors and technical operators. The study hopes to aid in empowering women media practitioners in order to enable them go beyond the glass ceiling in the world of media. It will also aid in streamlining the media fraternity in Kenya. Keywords: Media Practitioner, Gender, Media Ethics, Media Arena, Women