Young People and Technologies: Fostering Transformative Experiences

In "Preparing School Library Media Specialists for the New Century: Results of a Survey" ( Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 42: 3, pp. 220-227, Summer 2001), Carol Tilley and Daniel Callison found that among schools accredited by the American Library Association technology-focused courses ranked highest on the list of the most widely required courses for this professional speciality. The survey also revealed that technology-related courses dominated the roster of elective coursework. A quick reading of the survey may suggest that these graduate programs in information studies had presciently understood the increasing role that information and communications technologies (ICTs) play in the daily lives of both young people and the information professionals who serve them. Yet, data from the survey also revealed that ICT-related coursework focused on ICTs in service of professionals' needs, not ICTs in service of youth empowerment. Furthermore, the survey's scope did not allow it to address more illuminating questions including the extent to which other youth services information professionals such as public library children's specialists receive training in ICTs, to what degree education related to ICTs is supplanting a focus on traditional media and technologies, or how information schools can prepare professionals to foster transformative experiences for young people through the use of ICTs. The purpose of this roundtable, then, is to provide a forum for discussing how information schools might more effectively educate youth services information professionals in the theory and application of ICTs to their interactions--structured and unstructured--with young people. Participants will be encouraged to bring relevant course descriptions, class syllabi, assigned readings, and course assignment description to the discussion to provide concrete examples of issues. The conversation will be enriched through references to appropriate models from community and social informatics, media literacy, and traditional librarianship, as well as research and best practices in education. The Pacific Bell/UCLA Initiative for 21st Century Literacies provides an additional corpus of examples, research, and practice on which to draw

Posttraumatic Stress Symptomatology in Aging Combat Veterans: The Direct and Buffering Effects of Stress and Social Support

AbstractThe literature has reported that some older veterans are still distressed by memories of traumatic experiences decades after wartime military service. Recent research has suggested that posttraumatic stress symptoms may appear or reappear during late life in survivors of past trauma and that stress associated with age-related changes may intensify this phenomenon. This dissertation research examined the relationship between past combat exposure and posttraumatic stress symptomatology in community-dwelling veterans of World War II and the Korean War. The risk factor of perceived stress and the protective factor of perceived social support were examined for their potential to exacerbate or mitigate this relationship. The study also investigated the effect of past combat exposure and the role of the moderating variables on health-related quality of life. A secondary aim of the research was to assess the direct effect of perceived stress and perceived social support on the outcome variables.The results indicated that past combat exposure was positively associated with experiencing posttraumatic stress symptoms in World War II and Korean War veterans. Perceived stress was found to significantly exacerbate this relationship. Direct effect relationships were found between perceived stress and both posttraumatic stress symptomatology and health-related quality of life. The mean number of posttraumatic stress symptoms experienced by participants at the symptomatic level was five. The most frequent symptom experienced was sleep disturbance, the second was becoming upset at reminders of the traumatic experience. Increased levels of posttraumatic stress symptoms were found in veterans who were not married, living in an urban area, and diagnosed with depression

Controlling risk in a lightning-speed trading environment

A small group of high-frequency algorithmic trading firms have invested heavily in technology to leverage the nexus of high-speed communications, mathematical advances, trading and high-speed computing. By doing so, they are able to complete trades at lightning speeds. High-frequency algorithmic trading strategies rely on computerized quantitative models that identify which type of financial instruments to buy or sell (e.g., stocks, options or futures), as well as the quantity, price, timing and location of the trades. These so-called black boxes are capable of reading market data, transmitting thousands of order messages per second to an exchange, cancelling and replacing orders based on changing market conditions and capturing price discrepancies with little or no human intervention.Counterfeits and counterfeiting

Portfolio Diversification, Real Interest Rates, and the Balance of Payments

The paper shows that differences in real interest rates across countries can arise even with perfect competition and fully integrated international capital markets. Specifically, we find that factor returns will differ across countries which are identical except for differences in technological riskiness, overall productivity, or labor force size. We also show that differences across countries in technological riskiness, in risk aversion, in population size and in overall productivity will lead to a non-zero current account in the steady state. Higher technological riskiness, greater risk aversion, and a larger population should be associated with a current account surplus. The analysis is carried out using a two-country Diamond overlapping-generations model in which technological uncertainty is reflected in factor returns.

Leadership Matters: Governors' Pre-K Proposals Fiscal Year 2006

Twenty budget-savvy governors recently recommended increased investment in a cost-effective strategy that saves taxpayers money, boosts state economies, and prepares our youngest citizens for future success. That strategy is high-quality, voluntary pre-kindergarten.This report evaluates all 50 U.S. governors and the mayor of the District of Columbia in terms of their budgetary proposals and State of the State remarks in support of voluntary pre-k for all

Crotalus tortugensis

Number of Pages: 5Integrative BiologyGeological Science

Leadership Matters: Governors' Pre-K Proposals Fiscal Year 2007

Across the country, governors are recognizing high-quality, voluntary pre-kindergarten as a proven school-reform strategy. In 2006, 24 leaders prioritized this effort by proposing increased funding to expand and enhance their states' pre-k programs. These investments promise to improve both K-12 systems and children's opportunities for success in kindergarten and in life. This report reviews the state of the state addresses and proposed budgets of our nation's governors and the mayor of the District of Columbia to assess their individual commitments to high-quality pre-k for all

On Axion's Effect on Propagation of Monochromatic Electromagnetic Wave Through Strong Magnetic Field

A possibility of detecting the effect of photon-axion mixing in a cavity experiment is discussed. There are two photon-axion modes that acquire different indices of refraction and split in an inhomogeneous magnetic field. For a magnetic field inhomogeneous in the direction transverse to the light propagation an analytical solution is obtained both for the index of refraction and the beams' trajectories. In a cavity experiment, the beam splitting creates a bifurcation effect, which results in a decrease of the light intensity in the central region. Modulation of magnetic field can separate this effect from background by providing a narrow frequency range for any observed signal. When one integrates this effect over time and accounts for bandwidth, the overall drop in FWHM intensity is of order 10-2%. This is a very measurable effect.Comment: 5 pages with 2 figure

Understanding Trends in Poverty in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area

In 2010, about one in eight residents (12.1 percent, or 280,000 people) in the Pittsburgh region had incomes below the poverty level, an increase of 8.5 percent since the Great Recession started in 2007. Although demographic factors such as the arrival of new immigrants and more single-parent households contributed to the growing number of people living at or near poverty, the economy was the driving force in changing poverty rates. What does this mean for our region and for the future of our nonprofit sector