A Comparison of the Attitudes of Teachers and Parents Toward Discipline

It was the purpose of this study to measure and compare the attitudes of teachers and parents toward discipline. The null hypothesis on which this study was based was that there would be no statistically significant difference between the attitudes of teachers and parents toward discipline

Farm-gate nitrogen balances on intensive dairy farms in the south west of Ireland

peer-reviewedNitrogen management and farm-gate N balances were evaluated on 21 intensive dairy farms in the south west of Ireland for each of four years (2003 to 2006). The mean annual stocking density was equivalent to 202 kg/ha (s.d. 29.6) of N excreted by livestock on the farm. The mean annual farm-gate N surplus (imports – exports) declined between 2003 and 2006 (277 to 232 kg/ha, s.e. 6.8; P < 0.001) due to a decline in annual N imports (fertilizer, feed and imported manures; 335 to 288 kg/ha, s.e. 6.9; P < 0.001). Overall annual fertilizer N use on the farms decreased during the study period (266 to 223 kg/ha, s.e. 6.5; P < 0.001) mainly due to lower inputs for the first application in spring and for the production of first-cut silage. These decreases were partly offset by applying more slurry in spring for early grazing and for first-cut silage. The introduction of white clover resulted in lower N imports on four farms. Export of N from farms was unaffected by reductions in N imports. The mean efficiency of N use tended to increase over time (0.18 in 2003 to 0.20 in 2006). The large variation in quantities of fertilizer N applied on farms with similar stocking densities suggests potential for further improvements in the efficiency of N use. In terms of fertilizer N use, complying with S.I. No. 378 of 2006 did not require major changes in the N management practiceson 19 of the farms.This project was part-funded by the European Research and Development Fund under INTERREG IIIB: Green Dairy Project N° 100 and partly by the Dairy Levy. Financial support for post-graduate students involved in this study was provided by the Teagasc Walsh Fellowship Scheme

Cheating in the Digital Age: Do Students Cheat More in Online Courses?

With the assistance of the Internet and related technologies, students today have many more ways to be academically dishonest than students a generation ago. With more and more Internet based course offerings, the concern is whether cheating will increase as students work and take tests away from the eyes of instructors. While the research on academic dishonesty in general is quite extensive, there is very limited research on student cheating in online courses. This study of 635 undergraduate and graduate students at a medium sized university focused on student cheating behaviors in both types of classes (on-line and face to face), by examining cheating behavior and perceptions of whether on-line or traditional face-to-face classes experienced greater cheating behaviors. (Contains 6 tables.

THE ECONOMICS OF RIPARIAN MANAGEMENT: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Surface wind convergence as a short-term predictor of cloud-to-ground lightning at Kennedy Space Center: A four-year summary and evaluation

Since 1986, USAF forecasters at NASA-Kennedy have had available a surface wind convergence technique for use during periods of convective development. In Florida during the summer, most of the thunderstorm development is forced by boundary layer processes. The basic premise is that the life cycle of convection is reflected in the surface wind field beneath these storms. Therefore the monitoring of the local surface divergence and/or convergence fields can be used to determine timing, location, longevity, and the lightning hazards which accompany these thunderstorms. This study evaluates four years of monitoring thunderstorm development using surface wind convergence, particularly the average over the area. Cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning is related in time and space with surface convergence for 346 days during the summers of 1987 through 1990 over the expanded wind network at KSC. The relationships are subdivided according to low level wind flow and midlevel moisture patterns. Results show a one in three chance of CG lightning when a convergence event is identified. However, when there is no convergence, the chance of CG lightning is negligible

Solving the division of labour problem using stigmergy and evolved heterogeneity (abstract)

Evolving cooperative teams is a research area with applications in the fields of robotics and software agents. Progress on this problem could also help us to understand the evolution of cooperation in natural systems such as the social insects. The overarching question is how cooperative teams should be represented in order to promote efficient evolutionary search. More specifically, what should serve as our basic unit of selection— the individual or the team? —and how can the division-of-labour problem be solved? In order to answer these questions we have taken a benchmark problem from the genetic programming (GP) literature, the artificial ant problem, and extended it so that teams of ants must cooperate to complete the task. In this model, the ants are centrally placed in a bounded grid with each square containing food. The goal of the team is to harvest all the food in the environment in as few moves as possible. In the initial version of the problem, the members of the team are all clones, each having exactly the same GP controller program. Many solutions will have poor performance as the team members will all behave in the same way, and will therefore fail to cover the grid efficiently. To perform better, the ants must evolve to take advantage of stigmergic interactions to break the symmetry of the problem and clear the world of food efficiently. This division of labour through stigmergy is indeed what is seen to evolve during the simulations. A further extension is made by assigning each member of the team an identity tag, and adding the ability to execute different subtrees of the cloned controller based on this tag. When these operations are allowed, higher fitnesses are achieved than with the purely stigmergic situation above. During evolution, selection acts at the team level. We can therefore view the members of the team as being equivalent to cells in a multicellular organism. The identity branching operation is analogous to cell differentiation within this abstract organism. Using this scheme, the degree of differentiation is not specified a-priori and is controllable through evolution. This allows the full continuum from purely homogeneous teams to entirely heterogeneous teams to be expressed. There is also the potential to use this method as a way of measuring the degree to which a task demands heterogeneous solutions. The relative importance of stigmergy and innate heterogeneity in achieving the necessary division of labour were compared with a third experimental manipulation. The ability to influence each other stigmergically was removed by placing each ant in it’s own world and tallying the pieces of food consumed by the team as a whole. In this scenario, the most efficient way to tackle the problem is for the team to evolve complete heterogeneity. We conclude that the division-of-labour problem in the evolution of cooperative teams can be solved by both stigmergic communication and innate heterogeneity. Furthermore, the technique of allowing the level of heterogeneity of the team to be open to selection shows promise for future work