Novelty and Collective Attention

The subject of collective attention is central to an information age where millions of people are inundated with daily messages. It is thus of interest to understand how attention to novel items propagates and eventually fades among large populations. We have analyzed the dynamics of collective attention among one million users of an interactive website -- \texttt{digg.com} -- devoted to thousands of novel news stories. The observations can be described by a dynamical model characterized by a single novelty factor. Our measurements indicate that novelty within groups decays with a stretched-exponential law, suggesting the existence of a natural time scale over which attention fades

Screening for familial hypercholesterolaemia in primary care: Time for general practice to play its part

Fifty per cent of first-degree relatives of index cases with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) inherit the disorder. Despite cascade screening being the most cost-effective method for detecting new cases, only a minority of individuals with FH are currently identified. Primary care is a key target area to increase identification of new index cases and initiate cascade screening, thereby finding close relatives of all probands. Increasing public and health professional awareness about FH is essential. In the United Kingdom and in Australia, most of the population are reviewed by a General Practitioner (GP) at least once over a three-year period, offering opportunities to check for FH as part of routine clinical consultations. Such opportunistic approaches can be supplemented by systematically searching electronic health records with information technology tools that identify high risk patients. GPs can help investigate and implement results of this data retrieval. Current evidence suggests that early detection of FH and cascade testing meet most of the criteria for a worthwhile screening program. Among heterozygous patients the long latent period before the expected onset of coronary artery disease provides an opportunity for initiating effective drug and lifestyle changes. The greatest challenge for primary care is to implement an efficacious model of care that incorporates sustainable identification and management pathways

Feasibility Study for Special Education Services in Clark and Edgar Counties

The goal of this project was to determine if the eight local school districts in Clark and Edgar counties could provide special education services as effectively as the Eastern Illinois Special Education Cooperative. The study answered this question and provided the districts involved with sufficient data and analysis to recommend to their individual Boards of Education the way in which they would offer these services in the future. This project provided the districts with such alternatives to the current delivery system as to suggest the possibility that the centralized system of special education services has viable alternatives. Districts were able to determine the effectiveness of the current delivery system as compared to the alternative system proposed in this study. The value of this study was in its presence as an option for districts. Qualitative and quantitative considerations were made with respect to their impact on existing programs, facilities, transportation, finances, staff needs, and state reimbursement. The collection of data was conducted by surveying the affected districts, collecting data from the Eastern Illinois Area Special Education Cooperative, and consulting the Illinois State Board of Education

Treating patients with low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol: choices, issues and opportunities

Three clinical trials have recently focused on the benefits of lipid-regulating therapy in populations with normocholesterolaemia and low high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol. Two secondary prevention studies (Veterans Affairs HDL-Cholesterol Intervention Trial [VA-HIT] and Bezafibrate Infarction Prevention [BIP] trial) testified to the efficacy of fibrates in decreasing cardiovascular events, particularly in patients with coexisting risk factors, including hypertriglyceridaemia. The Air Force/Texas Coronary Atherosclerosis Prevention Study (AFCAPS/TexCAPS) demonstrated that a statin could decrease acute coronary events in patients with isolated low HDL-cholesterol in a primary prevention setting. The absolute risk reduction in coronary events in the VA-HIT study compares favourably with those reported from the statin-based Cholesterol and Recurrent Events (CARE) and Long-term Intervention with Pravastatin in Ischaemic Disease (LIPID) trials. The absolute risk reduction in AFCAPS-TexCAPS is similar to that in West of Scotland Coronary Pravastatin Study (WOSCOPS). Recommendations are given concerning lifestyle and pharmacological management of low HDL-cholesterol. Optimal management also requires review of current treatment targets for HDL-cholesterol and triglycerides levels

Feasibility Study for Special Education Services in Clark and Edgar Counties

The goal of this project was to determine if the eight local school districts in Clark and Edgar counties could provide special education services as effectively as the Eastern Illinois Special Education Cooperative. The study answered this question and provided the districts involved with sufficient data and analysis to recommend to their individual Boards of Education the way in which they would offer these services in the future. This project provided the districts with such alternatives to the current delivery system as to suggest the possibility that the centralized system of special education services has viable alternatives. Districts were able to determine the effectiveness of the current delivery system as compared to the alternative system proposed in this study. The value of this study was in its presence as an option for districts. Qualitative and quantitative considerations were made with respect to their impact on existing programs, facilities, transportation, finances, staff needs, and state reimbursement. The collection of data was conducted by surveying the affected districts, collecting data from the Eastern Illinois Area Special Education Cooperative, and consulting the Illinois State Board of Education

Who is teaching our children to spell? The literacy crisis in teacher education.

Anyone engaged in marking student essays at tertiary level today cannot fail but to be aware of the increasing inability of students to express themselves in grammatically correct and cogent argument. The problem is even more serious when is prevalent among those students who are studying to become teachers. Lists of school-boy howlers derived from the students\u27 essays are no longer funny, rather they are symptomatic of a crisis in literacy that is facing the educational systems of the nation. Testing of students within the Faculty of Education at Curtin University has shown that passes in Year 12 English examinations are of little use in predicting the ability of students to use language correctly or to be able to write effectively. Staff have difficulty in correcting errors because students no longer know the basic structures or understand the terminology. Is it being revisionist to call for an end to the laissez-faire approach of the creative writing curriculum and for a return to a more structured study of language? Do recent changes to the language curriculum, at least in Western Australia, indicate a response to community demands for more structure? This paper examines these issues in the light of an increasing inability of Education graduates to ensure their pupils achieve an acceptable level of literacy

Watch Out for the Beast: Fear Information and Attentional Bias in Children

Although valenced information about novel animals changes the implicit and explicit fear beliefs of children (Field & Lawson, 2003), how it might lead to anxiety is unknown. One possibility, based on cognitive models of anxiety, is that fear information creates attentional biases similar to those seen in anxiety disorders. Children between 7 and 9 years old were given positive information about 1 novel animal, negative information about another, and no information about the 3rd. A pictorial dot-probe task was used, immediately or with a 24-hr delay, to test for attentional biases to the different animals. The results replicated the finding that fear information changes children's fear beliefs. Regardless of whether there was a delay, children acquired an attentional bias in the left visual field toward the animal about which they held negative beliefs compared to the control animal. These results imply a possible way in which fear information might contribute to acquired fear

Spreading and shortest paths in systems with sparse long-range connections

Spreading according to simple rules (e.g. of fire or diseases), and shortest-path distances are studied on d-dimensional systems with a small density p per site of long-range connections (``Small-World'' lattices). The volume V(t) covered by the spreading quantity on an infinite system is exactly calculated in all dimensions. We find that V(t) grows initially as t^d/d for t>t^*$, generalizing a previous result in one dimension. Using the properties of V(t), the average shortest-path distance \ell(r) can be calculated as a function of Euclidean distance r. It is found that \ell(r) = r for r<r_c=(2p \Gamma_d (d-1)!)^{-1/d} log(2p \Gamma_d L^d), and \ell(r) = r_c for r>r_c. The characteristic length r_c, which governs the behavior of shortest-path lengths, diverges with system size for all p>0. Therefore the mean separation s \sim p^{-1/d} between shortcut-ends is not a relevant internal length-scale for shortest-path lengths. We notice however that the globally averaged shortest-path length, divided by L, is a function of L/s only.Comment: 4 pages, 1 eps fig. Uses psfi

The Morphology of the Tasmantid Seamounts: Interactions Between Tectonic Inheritance and Magmatic Evolution

No abstract available