Technology Supported Education :Virtual WSU Business Administration Pilot Program

This paper discusses a new initiative at Washington State University that will provide the opportunity for place-bound students across the state to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration. This degree will be fully AACSB accredited. The program under way at WSU will differ from traditional distance learning methods in that it will provide both live interaction between instructor and student via two-way audio/video connections as well as self-study course materials. Students will enter the Virtual Business Degree program after completing an AA degree at a local community college and will be able to complete their BA in two years. Electronic technology such as WWW, email, online audio and video lectures, chat rooms, and EMAIL will be the primary mechanisms used to deliver course materials and administer assignments and exams. Starting in January of 1998, courses will be delivered to students at four learning centers in remote areas of the state. The success of the program will be assessed on a course by course basis and as a whole. Multivariate statistical analysis will be used to measure the differences in student achievement and satisfaction as compared to students in the traditional classroom environment. From this we hope to measure not only the viability of the program but the relative success of distance learning techniques employed in the various courses

Computer Automated Reconciliation of Activity Models for Group Supported Organizational Modeling

Research at the University of Arizona and elsewhere have suggested that Electronic Meeting Systems augmented to support construction of Activity models can effectively support groups during development of semantic models. Group-enabled tools developed at the University of Arizona allow large groups of individuals from various functional units of an organization to actively participate in model development and to build models two to three times faster than traditional modeling approaches. Rapid model development shortens project times and makes it more likely that key personnel can participate during model development and analysis. To date, the tool set has been successfully used a number of groups for the collaborative development and analysis of business models using the IDEF0 Activity modeling methodology. This paper describes two software methods used to insure model correctness and shorten the model reconciliation proces

A História da Alimentação: balizas historiográficas

Os M. pretenderam traçar um quadro da História da Alimentação, não como um novo ramo epistemológico da disciplina, mas como um campo em desenvolvimento de práticas e atividades especializadas, incluindo pesquisa, formação, publicações, associações, encontros acadêmicos, etc. Um breve relato das condições em que tal campo se assentou faz-se preceder de um panorama dos estudos de alimentação e temas correia tos, em geral, segundo cinco abardagens Ia biológica, a econômica, a social, a cultural e a filosófica!, assim como da identificação das contribuições mais relevantes da Antropologia, Arqueologia, Sociologia e Geografia. A fim de comentar a multiforme e volumosa bibliografia histórica, foi ela organizada segundo critérios morfológicos. A seguir, alguns tópicos importantes mereceram tratamento à parte: a fome, o alimento e o domínio religioso, as descobertas européias e a difusão mundial de alimentos, gosto e gastronomia. O artigo se encerra com um rápido balanço crítico da historiografia brasileira sobre o tema

Full breastfeeding protection against common enteric bacteria and viruses: Results from the MAL-ED cohort study

Background Breastfeeding is known to reduce the risk of enteropathogen infections, but protection from specific enteropathogens is not well characterized. Objective The aim was to estimate the association between full breastfeeding (days fed breast milk exclusively or with nonnutritive liquids) and enteropathogen detection. Methods A total of 2145 newborns were enrolled at 8 sites, of whom 1712 had breastfeeding and key enteropathogen data through 6 mo. We focused on 11 enteropathogens: adenovirus 40/41, norovirus, sapovirus, astrovirus, and rotavirus, enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC), Campylobacter spp., and typical enteropathogenic E. coli as well as entero-aggregative E. coli, Shigella and Cryptosporidium. Logistic regression was used to estimate the risk of enteropathogen detection in stools and survival analysis was used to estimate the timing of first detection of an enteropathogen. Results Infants with 10% more days of full breastfeeding within the preceding 30 d of a stool sample were less likely to have the 3 E. coli and Campylobacter spp. detected in their stool (mean odds: 0.92–0.99) but equally likely (0.99–1.02) to have the viral pathogens detected in their stool. A 10% longer period of full breastfeeding from birth was associated with later first detection of the 3 E. coli, Campylobacter, adenovirus, astrovirus, and rotavirus (mean HRs of 0.52–0.75). The hazards declined and point estimates were not statistically significant at 3 mo. Conclusions In this large multicenter cohort study, full breastfeeding was associated with lower likelihood of detecting 4 important enteric pathogens in the first 6 mo of life. These results also show that full breastfeeding is related to delays in the first detection of some bacterial and viral pathogens in the stool. As several of these pathogens are risk factors for poor growth during childhood, this work underscores the importance of exclusive or full breastfeeding during the first 6 mo of life to optimize early health.publishedVersio