Resourcefulness matters: Student patterns for coping with structural and academic challenges

There is general agreement that there are many structural constraints beyond students’ control which influence the degree of success that students can attain as they learn to participate in academic practice. Less understood are the patterns of students’ experiences of the socio-economic environment of their schooling and university, their views of the enabling and constraining conditions of learning and their perceptions of their agency in overcoming these conditions. The data for our study were collected through a questionnaire survey of 591 Bachelor of Education students across three years of the degree at a South African University. Several patterns of resourcefulness and levels of articulation emerged which reveal complex sets of experiences and strategies as students reflect on adversities and challenges they encountered at school and at university. We argue for an in depth understanding of the nature of student agency which recognises its role in shaping their engagement with material, social, academic and affective challenges

People are sensitive to hypothesis sparsity during category discrimination

Previous work has shown that the information value of requests can be manipulated by controlling the sparsity of hypotheses, the degree to which category members are rare or common in the domain under consideration when making those requests. However, the degree to which people are sensitive to expected information value is unknown. This study examined a binary sorting task where sparsity differed across conditions. In contrast to previous work using hypotheses representable as visual areas, the stimuli in this study defined hypotheses in an abstract similarity space over geometric shapes. Participants could request labels for either category members or non-members. While both request types were used in all conditions, most often evenly, the proportion of participants showing a preference for one type of request was strongly impacted by the information value of that request type. A small tendency to prefer requests from the designated target category was also observed.Steven Langsford, Andrew T. Hendrickson, Amy Perfors, Daniel J. Navarr

Nucleon charge exchange on the deuteron: A critical review

The existing experimental data on the d(n,p)nn and d(p,n)pp cross sections in the forward direction are reviewed in terms of the Dean sum rule. It is shown that the measurement of the ratio of the charge exchange on the deuteron to that on the proton might, if taken together with other experimental data, allow a direct construction of the np -> np scattering amplitude in the backward direction with few ambiguities.Comment: 7 pages with 3 figure

Emotional logic development profiles – validating the benefits and safety of emotional logic training

peerreview_statement: The publishing and review policy for this title is described in its Aims & Scope. aims_and_scope_url: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=ijpc2

Integrating Goal Specification in Policy-Based Management

Current products and emerging IETF standards for policy-based management do not clearly distinguish the goal (the "what") of management from the rules or procedures that specify "how" to achieve the goal. This paper defines an information model that allows direct specification of management goals in addition to policy rules. We extend the IETF's draft "Policy Framework Core Information Model" and integrate it with our goal specification information model. Further, following the IETF's refinement of the core information model into a QoS information model, we show how the general goal information model is extended to specify specific types of goals, including service-level QoS goals. The relationship of goals and rules in policy specification is considered. A prototype implementation of a management server that uses the given information model to specify and enforce QoS goals on a per-user, perapplication basis is also discussed

The cellulase system of Cellulomonas fimi

NRC publication: Ye

Is the link between nutrients and foods understood? The case of fibre and folate

Objectives: To assess and contrast awareness of the link between dietary fibre and folate and their major food sources (fruit, vegetables, bread and cereals).Design and setting: Mailed questionnaire investigating changes made to dietary intake of fibre, folate, fruit, vegetables, bread and cereals in the previous six months.Setting: The survey was conducted between June and November 1998 in the Australian Capital Territory.Subjects: One thousand one hundred and twenty-six adults randomly selected from the electoral roll.Results: More women than men in both older (50 + years) and younger (18&ndash;49 years) age groups reported increasing their consumption of folate, fibre, fruit and vegetables in the prior six months. In contrast, more men than women reported increased consumption of bread, cereals, rice and pasta in the previous six months. For food categories and fibre, less than 4% of respondents were unsure about changes in these food habits. However, 26% of men and women were &lsquo;not sure&rsquo; about changes to folate intake. Similar proportions of men and women (about 33%) reported consuming more fruit, vegetables or cereal-based foods over the prior six months, yet only 6% of these men and 14% of these women reported consuming more folate. In contrast, 44% of men and 51% of women who reported consuming more plant foods also reported consuming more dietary fibre.Conclusions: The results suggested that subjects, particularly the younger age group, had a poor understanding of the relationship between folate intake and its major food sources. The understanding of the relationship between fibre intake and its food sources appeared substantial, but confusion about specific food sources was still evident. These outcomes question the effectiveness of nutrition education used to date, particularly for the current priority of increasing folate intake in younger women in the new, &lsquo;health claims&rsquo; environment.<br /