Timesharing in relation to broad ability domains

[Abstract]: The concept of a timesharing ability has been the subject of considerable interest in recent times. The present study set out to determine whether a timesharing factor can be identi¬fied when a number of competing tasks are presented in the midst of a range of single tests designed to sample a broad range of psychological dimensions. Evidence for the existence of such a factor would form an important addition to our knowledge of human cognitive functioning. The framework for the study was provided by the theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence. A battery of single and competing tasks was presented to 126 subjects. The competing tasks represented a variety of within- and across-factor combinations from different levels of the (Gf/Gc) hierarchy. Modality of presentation was also varied in some combinations. On the basis of evidence presented in this study, it would be pre¬mature to seek to include a timesharing factor in the (Gf/Gc) model of intelligence

The Strengths and Challenges of Community Organizing as an Education Reform Strategy: What the Research Says

Outlines the advantages of community organizing as a reform strategy, such as its ability to address power relationships and build political will for broad reform; evidence of impact; effective strategies, including working via alliances; and challenges

Immunogenicity of targeted lentivectors

To increase the safety and possibly efficacy of HIV-1 derived lentivectors (LVs) as an anti-cancer vaccine, we recently developed the Nanobody (Nb) display technology to target LVs to antigen presenting cells (APCs). In this study, we extend these data with exclusive targeting of LVs to conventional dendritic cells (DCs), which are believed to be the main cross-presenting APCs for the induction of a TH1-conducted antitumor immune response. The immunogenicity of these DC-subtype targeted LVs was compared to that of broad tropism, general APC-targeted and non-infectious LVs. Intranodal immunization with ovalbumin encoding LVs induced proliferation of antigen specific CD4(+) T cells, irrespective of the LVs' targeting ability. However, the cytokine secretion profile of the restimulated CD4(+) T cells demonstrated that general APC targeting induced a similar TH1-profile as the broad tropism LVs while transduction of conventional DCs alone induced a similar and less potent TH1 profile as the non-infectious LVs. This observation contradicts the hypothesis that conventional DCs are the most important APCs and suggests that the activation of other APCs is also meaningful. Despite these differences, all targeted LVs were able to stimulate cytotoxic T lymphocytes, be it to a lesser extent than broad tropism LVs. Furthermore this induction was shown to be dependent on type I interferon for the targeted and non-infectious LVs, but not for broad tropism LVs. Finally we demonstrated that the APC-targeted LVs were as potent in therapy as broad tropism LVs and as such deliver on their promise as safer and efficacious LV-based vaccines

Management economics in a large UK retailer

We study the link between middle-management ability and shop labour productivity using data from 245 shops of a UK nationwide retailer. The company scores six broad areas of management practice, the most important of which turns out to be "commercial awareness", where able managers achieve 17% higher labour productivity in their shops compared to less able ones. We further show that the managers’ incentive pay scheme, required to encourage them to exert their ability in full, is implicitly an insurance one, with managers taking a share in deviations of actual sales from expected. At the same time, abler managers do not receive higher pay all else equal, which implies that middle management ability is not fully tradeable.

From Frequency to Meaning: Vector Space Models of Semantics

Computers understand very little of the meaning of human language. This profoundly limits our ability to give instructions to computers, the ability of computers to explain their actions to us, and the ability of computers to analyse and process text. Vector space models (VSMs) of semantics are beginning to address these limits. This paper surveys the use of VSMs for semantic processing of text. We organize the literature on VSMs according to the structure of the matrix in a VSM. There are currently three broad classes of VSMs, based on term-document, word-context, and pair-pattern matrices, yielding three classes of applications. We survey a broad range of applications in these three categories and we take a detailed look at a specific open source project in each category. Our goal in this survey is to show the breadth of applications of VSMs for semantics, to provide a new perspective on VSMs for those who are already familiar with the area, and to provide pointers into the literature for those who are less familiar with the field

A general equilibrium theory of college with education subsidies, in-school labor supply, and borrowing constraints

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of three different types of education policies: tuition subsidies (broad based, merit based, and flat tuition), grant subsidies (broad based and merit based), and loan limit restrictions. We develop a quantitative theory of college within the context of general equilibrium overlapping generations economy. College is modeled as a multi-period risky investment with endogenous enrollment, time-to-degree, and dropout behavior. Tuition costs can be financed using federal grants, student loans, and working while at college. We show that our model accounts for the main statistics regarding education (enrollment rate, dropout rate, and time to degree) while matching the observed aggregate wage premiums. Our model predicts that broad based tuition subsidies and grants increase college enrollment. However, due to the correlation between ability and financial resources most of these new students are from the lower end of the ability distribution and eventually dropout or take longer than average to complete college. Merit based education policies counteract this adverse selection problem but at the cost of a muted enrollment response. Our last policy experiment highlights an important interaction between the labor-supply margin and borrowing. A significant decrease in enrollment is found to occur only when borrowing constraints are severely tightened and the option to work while in school is removed. This result suggests that previous models that have ignored the student's labor supply when analyzing borrowing constraints may be insufficient.Education - Economic aspects ; College costs

Bail Reform for the Eighties: A Reply to Senator Kennedy

The Bail Reform Act of 1966 may rank as the most significant legislative reform of the criminal process of this century. A product of the New Frontier and the Great Society, it reflected a broad consensus that society had the ability and the duty to alleviate tile disadvantages caused by poverty, racism, and powerlessness. The Act recognized that pretrial incarceration was frequently unnecessary to assure appearance at trial and that it was unjust and discriminatory when reasonable alternatives were available. Money bail was deemphasized, and the courts were directed to release persons without it when circumstances permitted

Modularization for the Cell Ontology

One of the premises of the OBO Foundry is that development of an orthogonal set of ontologies will increase domain expert contributions and logical interoperability, and decrease maintenance workload. For these reasons, the Cell Ontology (CL) is being re-engineered. This process requires the extraction of sub-modules from existing OBO ontologies, which presents a number of practical engineering challenges. These extracted modules may be intended to cover a narrow or a broad set of species. In addition, applications and resources that make use of the Cell Ontology have particular modularization requirements, such as the ability to extract custom subsets or unions of the Cell Ontology with other OBO ontologies. These extracted modules may be intended to cover a narrow or a broad set of species, which presents unique complications.

We discuss some of these requirements, and present our progress towards a customizable simple-to-use modularization tool that leverages existing OWL-based tools and opens up their use for the CL and other ontologies

Financial literacy and subprime mortgage delinquency: evidence from a survey matched to administrative data

The exact cause of the massive defaults and foreclosures in the U.S. subprime mortgage market is still unclear. This paper investigates whether a particular aspect of borrowers' financial literacy—their numerical ability—may have played a role. We measure several aspects of financial literacy and cognitive ability in a survey of subprime mortgage borrowers who took out mortgages in 2006 or 2007 and match these measures to objective data on mortgage characteristics and repayment performance. We find a large and statistically significant negative correlation between numerical ability and various measures of delinquency and default. Foreclosure starts are approximately two-thirds lower in the group with the highest measured level of numerical ability compared with the group with the lowest measured level. The result is robust to controlling for a broad set of sociodemographic variables and not driven by other aspects of cognitive ability or the characteristics of the mortgage contracts. Our results raise the possibility that limitations in certain aspects of financial literacy played an important role in the subprime mortgage crisis.