Designing and Piloting a Tool for the Measurement of the Use of Pronunciation Learning Strategies

What appears to be indispensable to drive the field forward and ensure that research findings will be comparable across studies and provide a sound basis for feasible pedagogic proposals is to draw up a classification of PLS and design on that basis a valid and reliable data collection tool which could be employed to measure the use of these strategies in different groups of learners, correlate it with individual and contextual variables, and appraise the effects of training programs. In accordance with this rationale, the present paper represents an attempt to propose a tentative categorization of pronunciation learning strategies, adopting as a point of reference the existing taxonomies of strategic devices (i.e. O'Malley and Chamot 1990; Oxford 1990) and the instructional options teachers have at their disposal when dealing with elements of this language subsystem (e.g. Kelly 2000; Goodwin 2001). It also introduces a research instrument designed on the basis of the classification that shares a number of characteristics with Oxford's (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning but, in contrast to it, includes both Likert-scale and open-ended items. The findings of a pilot study which involved 80 English Department students demonstrate that although the tool requires considerable refinement, it provides a useful point of departure for future research into PLS

Effects of Price and Access Laws on Teenage Smoking Initiation: A National Longitudinal Analysis

Over the past three decades a significant amount of economic research has established that increasing cigarette prices reduces cigarette smoking among both adults and adolescents. The consensus estimates for the price elasticity of adult demand from these studies fall in a narrow range of 0.3 to 0.5, suggesting that a 10% increase in the price of cigarettes would decrease adult consumption by 3%-5%. A smaller literature on youth responsiveness to cigarette prices has also emerged. A majority of these studies concluded that youth are up to three times as responsive to price as are adults. Only four econometric studies have attempted to model youth and young adult smoking initiation decisions. All four studies concluded that cigarette prices (or cigarette excise taxes) are insignificant determinants of smoking initiation. This study addresses the limitations of the previous studies on smoking initiation and examines the impact of cigarette prices and youth access laws on adolescent smoking initiation. Nationally representative longitudinal surveys of 8th and 10th graders as part of the Monitoring the Future project are employed in the analysis. State-specific prices and several measures of youth access restrictions are added to the survey data. Discrete-time hazard methods are used to model the probability of initiation. Contradicting the results of the four previous studies on smoking initiation, the results of this study clearly indicate that increases in the price of cigarettes would significantly reduce the number of adolescents who start smoking. The results are mixed with respect to youth access restrictions.

Multiplexed dispersive readout of superconducting phase qubits

We introduce a frequency-multiplexed readout scheme for superconducting phase qubits. Using a quantum circuit with four phase qubits, we couple each qubit to a separate lumped-element superconducting readout resonator, with the readout resonators connected in parallel to a single measurement line. The readout resonators and control electronics are designed so that all four qubits can be read out simultaneously using frequency multiplexing on the one measurement line. This technology provides a highly efficient and compact means for reading out multiple qubits, a significant advantage for scaling up to larger numbers of qubits.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Estimating Peer Effects in Longitudinal Dyadic Data Using Instrumental Variables

The identification of causal peer effects (also known as social contagion or induction) from observational data in social networks is challenged by two distinct sources of bias: latent homophily and unobserved confounding. In this paper, we investigate how causal peer effects of traits and behaviors can be identified using genes (or other structurally isomorphic variables) as instrumental variables (IV) in a large set of data generating models with homophily and confounding. We use directed acyclic graphs to represent these models and employ multiple IV strategies and report three main identification results. First, using a single fixed gene (or allele) as an IV will generally fail to identify peer effects if the gene affects past values of the treatment. Second, multiple fixed genes/alleles, or, more promisingly, time-varying gene expression, can identify peer effects if we instrument exclusion violations as well as the focal treatment. Third, we show that IV identification of peer effects remains possible even under multiple complications often regarded as lethal for IV identification of intra-individual effects, such as pleiotropy on observables and unobservables, homophily on past phenotype, past and ongoing homophily on genotype, inter-phenotype peer effects, population stratification, gene expression that is endogenous to past phenotype and past gene expression, and others. We apply our identification results to estimating peer effects of body mass index (BMI) among friends and spouses in the Framingham Heart Study. Results suggest a positive causal peer effect of BMI between friends

Information Technology: A Study Of Ac-countants Skills And Knowledge Levels

This article examines the results of a survey mailed to 940 accounting professionals in which they identify the categories of IT skills and knowledge that are required to perform their job. Using cluster analysis, this article next examines whether - and to what extent -relationships exist between different categories of IT skills and knowledge. Survey results are then presented regarding methods by which accounting professionals acquire needed job-related IT skills and knowledge

24^{24}Mg(pp, α\alpha)21^{21}Na reaction study for spectroscopy of 21^{21}Na

The $^{24}$Mg($p$, $\alpha$)$^{21}$Na reaction was measured at the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in order to better constrain spins and parities of energy levels in $^{21}$Na for the astrophysically important $^{17}$F($\alpha, p$)$^{20}$Ne reaction rate calculation. 31 MeV proton beams from the 25-MV tandem accelerator and enriched $^{24}$Mg solid targets were used. Recoiling $^{4}$He particles from the $^{24}$Mg($p$, $\alpha$)$^{21}$Na reaction were detected by a highly segmented silicon detector array which measured the yields of $^{4}$He particles over a range of angles simultaneously. A new level at 6661 $\pm$ 5 keV was observed in the present work. The extracted angular distributions for the first four levels of $^{21}$Na and Distorted Wave Born Approximation (DWBA) calculations were compared to verify and extract angular momentum transfer.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Accelerators and Beam Utilization (ICABU2014