Cellular Phones Influence(s) and Impacts(s) on Social Interactions and Interpersonal Relationships

This paper seeks to explore how cellular phones (cell phones/mobiles) have influenced and impacted social interactions and interpersonal relationships. There have been a number of suggested theories and studies that have been contributed to the rising popularity and commonality of cell phones as to how they are affecting the way individuals are interacting in society. Some of these include, a change in the concept of time and space (Fortunati, 2002), lack of face-to-face interaction (Thompson and Cupples, 2008), the maintenance of relationships, social absences, and social dependency (Reid and Reid, 2004). In addition to these ideas, it has also been suggested that the use of cell phones has had a negative affect on social relationships, grammar, and increased social anxiety (Tully, 2003)

Experiences of Traditional and Non-Traditional College Students

This is a quantitative study of the experiences of traditional and non-traditional at the college level. The study results from a sample of 176 undergraduate students at the University of New Hampshire. Using a questionnaire, results show that there is a significant difference in the time spent studying and preparing for class between traditional and non-traditional students. The majority of non-traditional students spend upward of 6 hours each week preparing for class, where only half as many traditional students spend this much time. Results also show a significant difference in the social expectations both groups have upon entering college. Traditional students reported that their social expectations were exceeded, while the majority of non-traditional students reported having no social expectations for college. When looking at learning environment preference, results show that both traditional and non-traditional students prefer face-to-face classroom learning over online learning. Larger implications of this study show the importance of recognizing the needs of non-traditional students, as well as giving them a support system to allow a more enjoyable college experience

Unagreement is an illusion

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11049-015-9311-yThis paper proposes an analysis of unagreement, a phenomenon involving an apparent mismatch between a definite third person plural subject and first or second person plural subject agreement observed in various null subject languages (e.g. Spanish, Modern Greek and Bulgarian), but notoriously absent in others (e.g. Italian, European Portuguese). A cross-linguistic correlation between unagreement and the structure of adnominal pronoun constructions suggests that the availability of unagreement depends on whether person and definiteness are hosted by separate heads (in languages like Greek) or bundled on a single head (i.e. pronominal determiners in languages like Italian). Null spell-out of the head hosting person features high in the extended nominal projection of the subject leads to unagreement. The lack of unagreement in languages with pronominal determiners results from the interaction of their syntactic structure with the properties of the vocabulary items realising the head encoding both person and definiteness. The analysis provides a principled explanation for the cross-linguistic distribution of unagreement and suggests a unified framework for deriving unagreement, adnominal pronoun constructions, personal pronouns and pro

QUAREP-LiMi: A community-driven initiative to establish guidelines for quality assessment and reproducibility for instruments and images in light microscopy

A modern day light microscope has evolved from a tool devoted to making primarily empirical observations to what is now a sophisticated , quantitative device that is an integral part of both physical and life science research. Nowadays, microscopes are found in nearly every experimental laboratory. However, despite their prevalent use in capturing and quantifying scientific phenomena, neither a thorough understanding of the principles underlying quantitative imaging techniques nor appropriate knowledge of how to calibrate, operate and maintain microscopes can be taken for granted. This is clearly demonstrated by the well-documented and widespread difficulties that are routinely encountered in evaluating acquired data and reproducing scientific experiments. Indeed, studies have shown that more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to repeat another scientist's experiments, while more than half have even failed to reproduce their own experiments. One factor behind the reproducibility crisis of experiments published in scientific journals is the frequent underreporting of imaging methods caused by a lack of awareness and/or a lack of knowledge of the applied technique. Whereas quality control procedures for some methods used in biomedical research, such as genomics (e.g. DNA sequencing, RNA-seq) or cytometry, have been introduced (e.g. ENCODE), this issue has not been tackled for optical microscopy instrumentation and images. Although many calibration standards and protocols have been published, there is a lack of awareness and agreement on common standards and guidelines for quality assessment and reproducibility. In April 2020, the QUality Assessment and REProducibility for instruments and images in Light Microscopy (QUAREP-LiMi) initiative was formed. This initiative comprises imaging scientists from academia and industry who share a common interest in achieving a better understanding of the performance and limitations of microscopes and improved quality control (QC) in light microscopy. The ultimate goal of the QUAREP-LiMi initiative is to establish a set of common QC standards, guidelines, metadata models and tools, including detailed protocols, with the ultimate aim of improving reproducible advances in scientific research. This White Paper (1) summarizes the major obstacles identified in the field that motivated the launch of the QUAREP-LiMi initiative; (2) identifies the urgent need to address these obstacles in a grassroots manner, through a community of stakeholders including, researchers, imaging scientists, bioimage analysts, bioimage informatics developers, corporate partners, funding agencies, standards organizations, scientific publishers and observers of such; (3) outlines the current actions of the QUAREP-LiMi initiative and (4) proposes future steps that can be taken to improve the dissemination and acceptance of the proposed guidelines to manage QC. To summarize, the principal goal of the QUAREP-LiMi initiative is to improve the overall quality and reproducibility of light microscope image data by introducing broadly accepted standard practices and accurately captured image data metrics