Personality as a Gestalt: A Cluster Analytic Approach to the Big Five

There has been a recent resurgence in interest in the study of personality types. This personality type research has focused on the uncovering of statistical types, rather than relying on rationally developed types. Using the method of cluster analysis, I investigated whether such statistical types could be uncovered and whether they correspond to the types described in previous analyses. The expected number of personality types was uncovered and, while these types resemblanced the personality types discussed in the literature, the patterns of scores for these types were not exactly as hypothesized

Meta-analysis of therapeutic interventions for the treatment of test anxiety.

This systematic review and meta-analysis was designed to be a practitioner-focused review of the current research into interventions for the treatment of test anxiety. As testing continues to be a large part of students’ academic experiences and the stakes of that testing grow for students, teachers, and schools, there is a need for a synthesis of the literature to provide teachers and schools with some guidance on how best to help their students succeed. In this review, I describe the phenomenon of test anxiety and the current theoretical questions concerning the relationship between test anxiety and test performance. I also review prior syntheses of the test anxiety literature and describe why a new review is necessary. After a robust literature search and double screening all reports found, eligible studies were double coded. Forty-two effect sizes, nested in 23 studies, were eligible for this review and reported sufficient information to be included in the meta-analysis. I conducted tests for publication bias and assessments of internal validity. The overall meta-analytic mean effect size was 0.22 standard deviations. Planned moderation tests explored the heterogeneity of the research base. Substantial, though not statistically significant, differences in effect sizes were noted for the type of intervention/therapeutic approach used, test subject, and academic level of the sample. Overall, there are several limitations to the research base used in this meta-analysis. Underreporting of outcomes that were not statistically significant was common and studies often did not include basic information regarding the study sample. Approximately a third of the outcomes that met standards for inclusion in this review could not be included due to insufficient reporting of data needed to calculate an effect size. Additional problems related to the “light touch” approach of many interventions were also discussed, as was the seeming lack of theoretical foundations for some of the interventions. There is a need for additional research in this area to provide high-quality evidence of the effectiveness of test anxiety interventions on test performance

Speed of Sound in Solid Materials

The speed of sound for a solid material is the speed of wave propagation that arises from the expansion and contraction of solid particles. The speed of a sound wave is proportional to the square of the ratio between a solid\u27s elastic property and its inertial property. We experimentally measure the speed of sound in several different materials

The Future of Fair Housing and Fair Credit: From Crisis to Opportunity, Symposium: New Strategies in Fair Housing

The following paper provides an assessment of the current housing and credit crisis from a racial justice lens. The paper explores how race was interwoven into the current crisis and demonstrates the racialized impacts of the housing and credit crisis. We also explore some of the current challenges facing fair housing in our society, presenting concepts and models of reform to promote true integration with opportunity. We close with a new paradigm for addressing fair housing in the future and utilizing the opportunities presented by this crisis to produce a fair housing opportunity and a just society for all

Unfamiliar Edinburgh: Being and Becoming in the City

Unfamiliar Edinburgh: Being and Becoming in the Cit

Top and Bottom: a Brane of Their Own

We consider extra dimensional descriptions of models where there are two separate strongly interacting sectors contributing to electroweak symmetry breaking (``topcolor'' type models). In the extra dimensional picture there would be two separate (anti-de Sitter) bulks meeting on the Planck brane, with each bulk having its own corresponding IR (TeV) brane. Sources for electroweak symmetry breaking can then be localized on both of these IR branes, while the different generations of fermions may be separated from each other. We describe the modes propagating in such a setup, and consider the cases where the electroweak symmetry breaking on either of the two IR branes come either from a higgsless scenario (via boundary conditions) or a (top-)Higgs. We show that the tension that exists between obtaining a large top quark mass and the correct value of the Zb\bar{b} couplings in ordinary higgsless models can be largely relieved in the higgsless--top-Higgs versions of the two IR brane models. This may also be true in the purely higgsless--higgsless case, however since that model is necessarily in the strongly coupled regime the tree-level results for the properties of the third generation may get large corrections. A necessary consequence of such models is the appearance of additional pseudo-Goldstone bosons (``top-pions''), which would be strongly coupled to the third generation.Comment: 34 pages, LaTeX, 6 figures. v2: figure 2 fixed, footnote, comments and references adde

Principles of Biology II (Valdosta State University)

This Grants Collection for Principles of Biology II was created under a Round Four ALG Textbook Transformation Grant. Affordable Learning Georgia Grants Collections are intended to provide faculty with the frameworks to quickly implement or revise the same materials as a Textbook Transformation Grants team, along with the aims and lessons learned from project teams during the implementation process. Documents are in .pdf format, with a separate .docx (Word) version available for download. Each collection contains the following materials: Linked Syllabus Initial Proposal Final Reporthttps://oer.galileo.usg.edu/biology-collections/1009/thumbnail.jp

Focusing on Cultural Design Features for an Indigenous Website

This paper reports on part of a user-centred study examining the design of a website for an Indigenous Australian community. It focuses on the capture of culturally relevant design features and describes the outcomes from a focus group undertaken with 12 members of the community stakeholders. Key cultural themes to emerge from the focus group were the need for visually relevant imagery, support for kinship and community, as well as fun, local language and traditional forms of music, dance and oral history. These themes were mapped into design features such as a virtual tour of the building and grounds, video messages from community members, a facility for feedback and interactive games. Many existing guidelines for cultural design were affirmed in the study, including the use of simple language, local imagery and the provision of an interaction style appropriate to the Indigenous group

Actin Gene Family Evolution and the Phylogeny of Coleoid Cephalopods (Mollusca: Cephalopoda)

Phylogenetic analysis conducted on a 784-bp fragment of 82 actin gene sequences of 44 coleoid cephalopod taxa, along with results obtained from genomic Southern blot analysis, confirmed the presence of at least three distinct actin loci in coleoids. Actin isoforms were characteri zed through phylogenetic analysis of representative cephalopod sequences from each of the three isoforms, along with translated actin cDNA sequences from a diverse array of metazoan taxa downloaded from GenBank. One of the three isoforms found in cephalopods was closely related to actin sequences expressed in the muscular tissues of other molluscs. A second isoform was most similar to cytoplasmic-specific actin amino acid sequences. The muscle type actins of molluscs were found to be distinct from those of arthropods, suggesting at least two independent derivations of muscle actins in the protostome lineage, although statistical support for this conclusion was lacking. Parsimony and maximum-likelihood analyses of two of the isoforms from which \u3e30 orthologous coleoid sequences had been obtained (one of the cytoplasmic actins and the muscle actin) supported the monophyly of several higher-level coleoid taxa. These included the superorders Octopodiformes and Decapodiformes, the order Octopoda, the octopod suborder Incirrata, and the teuthoid suborder Myopsida. The monophyly of several taxonomic groups within the Decapodiformes was not supported, including the orders Teuthoidea and Sepioidea and the teuthoid suborder Oegopsida. Parametric bootstrap analysis conducted on the simulated cytoplasmic actin data set provided statistical support to reject the monophyly of the Sepioidea. Although parametric bootstrap analysis of the muscle actin isoform did not reject sepioid monophyly at the 5% level, the results (rejection at P = 0.068) were certainly suggestive of sepioid nonmonophyly