Information processing deficits in psychiatric populations: Implications for normal workload assessment

In one study, schizophrenics, bipolar manics, and mentally normal individuals were administered a digit recall task. The total performance of schizophrenics looked much like that of a normal processor under a higher load level. The manics' performance was intermediate. Primary performance was particularly poor among the mentally ill subjects. In a second study, three groups in the same populations as in the first study were asked to shadow and recall verbatim eight descriptive text passages. Distraction effects were found for schizophrenics only in the areas of percentage of words correctly shadowed and recall variables; the two areas were not correlated, however. It appears that, for schizophrenics, distraction disrupts the ability to effectively shadow information to a greater extent than it disrupts the ability to encode information for recall. The two studies imply that capacity-carrying abnormalities that affect the quantity but not the quality of information processing can be useful in pointing to information processing of normal humans under high load conditions

Air-breathing hypersonic vehicle guidance and control studies; An integrated trajectory/control analysis methodology: Phase 1

A tool which generates optimal trajectory/control histories in an integrated manner is generically adapted to the treatment of single-stage-to-orbit air-breathing hypersonic vehicles. The methodology is implemented as a two point boundary value problem solution technique. Its use permits an assessment of an entire near-minimum-fuel trajectory and desired control strategy from takeoff to orbit while satisfying physically derived inequality constraints and while achieving efficient propulsive mode phasing. A simpler analysis strategy that partitions the trajectory into several boundary condition matched segments is also included to construct preliminary trajectory and control history representations with less computational burden than is required for the overall flight profile assessment. A demonstration was accomplished using a tabulated example (winged-cone accelerator) vehicle model that is combined with a newly developed multidimensional cubic spline data smoothing routine. A constrained near-fuel-optimal trajectory, imposing a dynamic pressure limit of 1000 psf, was developed from horizontal takeoff to 20,000 ft/sec relative air speed while aiming for a polar orbit. Previously unspecified propulsive discontinuities were located. Flight regimes demanding rapid attitude changes were identified, dictating control effector and closed-loop controller authority was ascertained after evaluating effector use for vehicle trim. Also, inadequacies in vehicle model representations and specific subsystem models with insufficient fidelity were determined based on unusual control characteristics and/or excessive sensitivity to uncertainty

Income, Work and Freedom

The ability of public policies to secure the economic and social rights recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is proposed as a trumping supplement to the utility-maximization criterion of neo-classical welfare economics. Two progressive proposals for ending poverty and promoting personal development and freedom are then compared using this assessment criterion. The first proposal is that society guarantee everyone an unconditional basic income (BI) without imposing work requirements in exchange for the guarantee. The second proposal is that society use direct job creation to provide employment assurance (EA) for anyone who is unable to find decent work in the economy’s regular labor market. The cost of equally expansive versions of the two strategies is compared along with their ability to achieve other policy goals. It is argued that a BI guarantee would be far more expensive than the EA strategy as a means of securing the right to income recognized in the Universal Declaration, that a BI guarantee would not provide an adequate substitute for securing the right to work, and that most of the other benefits a BI guarantee would produce could be better achieved at less cost by using the EA strategy supplemented by conventional income transfer programs. Based on this analysis it is argued that efforts to promote the BI idea as a solution to the problems of unemployment and poverty in market societies should be rejected. On the other hand, less expensive versions of the BI idea could make a valuable contribution to the design of income transfer measures as long as they were not treated as a substitute for policies designed to secure the right to work and income support recognized in the Universal Declaration

Distributed Leadership: A Review of Literature

A review of empirical research studies of distributed leadership from public and private sector settings completed since 1995

Clinical applications of neuropsychological assessment

Neuropsychological assessment is a performance-based method to assess cognitive functioning. This method is used to examine the cognitive consequences of brain damage, brain disease, and severe mental illness. There are several specific uses of neuropsychological assessment, including collection of diagnostic information, differential diagnostic information, assessment of treatment response, and prediction of functional potential and functional recovery. We anticipate that clinical neuropsychological assessment will continue to be used, even in the face of advances in imaging technology, because it is already well known that the presence of significant brain changes can be associated with nearly normal cognitive functioning, while individuals with no lesions detectable on imaging can have substantial cognitive and functional limitations

The role and value of A-level geography fieldwork: a case study

Fieldwork has occupied a prominent position in UK geography teaching since the establishment of the discipline in the late nineteenth century, and remains a ubiquitous element of the geography curriculum for pre- and post- sixteen year-olds today. Utilising autobiography as a method of reconstruction and interpretation, the thesis explores the development of this central role for fieldwork and argues that, rather than arising from a legitimacy effected by a critical appraisal of fieldwork as a pedagogical device, fieldwork has developed pari passu in response to geography’s disciplinary shifts in philosophical and methodological orientation. As a result, varying conceptions of the purpose of fieldwork exist: as a parallel with practical 'laboratory' science in which theory is thought to be rendered more intelligible by the experience; as a means of teaching geographical enquiry skills; as a process of environmental engagement or immersion. The relationship between these educational objectives remains unclear, and a lack of educational research exists to clarify what is done on fieldwork, its intended educational function and effectiveness, and its place in contemporary geography. The study seeks to redress the balance by aiming to analyse the role and value of a residential fieldwork experience in geographical learning for advanced level geography students (i.e. students aged 16-19); to compare and contrast the respective assessments of the student and teacher of fieldwork’s purpose; and to explore frameworks and methods for evaluating the effectiveness of field instruction as a learning process. The research uses qualitative research strategies in a case-study to describe and analyse the holistic process of learning in action from the perspectives of its participants. Four themes are explored in depth: skills-based learning, affective learning, learning transfer, and geography fieldwork as environmental education. Results show that learning is affected by a tension of purpose between teaching for theoretical exemplification, technical competency and investigative skills, and environmental awareness. Stage-management in hypothesis-testing aimed at developing students' conceptual understanding is the predominant teaching method but despite this emphasis successful transfer of learning is low. The technical competency emphasis is propositioned as moving fieldwork towards utilisation of a technocentric ideology in addressing environmental issues in geography. This is regarded as devaluing an individual's environmental experience, personal commitment, and political obligation which are seen as important aspects of an environmental education. Fieldwork is seen to be most valuable in the affective domain: producing self- and subject-motivation through inter alia novelty of milieu, self-concept enhancement, productive role-modelling, and changing students' 'scripts' for learning. The links between these affective dimensions and fieldwork's role in students' cognitive development offer profitable avenues for further research

A comedy of anguish: a study of the plays of Eugene Ionesco

The antithetical title A Comedy of Anguish has been selected to represent the ironic manner and tone in which Ionesco has sought to release from his subconscious fears, fears common to humanity in every age. His unmitigated anguish serves as a reminder of the consequences of that scientific discovery, made long before Nietzsche’s cry "God is dead", that we are confined to the limits of time and hence desperately need to relate to a substitute for the Almighty, beyond those limits. Confronted with this dilemma, he continues to be suggesting, from La Cantatrice chauve to L’Homme aux valises, we need to reconsider our concepts of culture and reality itself. This scepticism is reflected in the theatrical experience which he conceives of as being therapeutic and non-utilitarian. In his choice of themes (chapter l), he reduces his material to fundamentals, attaching overwhelming significance to personal anecdotes, dreams and the irrational as these alone appear to him to be representative of mankind as a whole. He rejects the forces of rationalism as essentially perverted. "Marionettes" for the most part replace conventional characters (chapter 3), whilst causal necessities of plot are abandoned in favour of a rhythm of proliferation (chapter k) and language based on rational logic is dismissed as the prerogative of concierges and corrupt politicians (chapter 5). Moreover, far from being dependent on any literary text, these plays have evocatively exploited all the resources of stagecraft (chapter 6). Long after the iconoclasm of the early 1950’s; his plays continue to enjoy success. His pessimism, traditionally associated with humorists, has not wained, nor has the consistency of his thought. Within a concise thematic framework he has retained a child-like simplicity and sense of exaggeration, best suited to express the latent paradoxes and aspirations of the contemporary age