49 research outputs found
Helge S. Kragh, Conceptions of Cosmos [Book Review]
No full textHelge S. Kragh, historian of science and prolific author of books (and a member of the editorial board
of this journal), has given us nothing less than a thorough history of cosmology, from biblical myths to
the present view of accelerated expansion. It’s a noble thing to try, and even if it isn’t always perfectly
accurate, Conceptions of Cosmos makes a real contribution to the literature
First in the Nation in Education : Final Report,1984.
No full textThis report is one step in an ongoing process of change and is a plea for commitment for high standards in education in Iowa. Contains the final reports of the six subcommittees as adopted by the Excellence in Education Task Force, and the five recommendations made by the Task Force
Employment in public child welfare: implications for social work practice
No full textThe primary objectives of the study were to determine the profile of the public child welfare workers employed with the Department of Family and Children Services, to investigate what training had been received, where received, and to access what training was needed to adequately perform the duties of a Social Services Specialist. Also, the study assessed the workers� perception of the quality of work life in a public child welfare agency. Methodologically, this study employed survey research and was comparative in nature. The study was conducted in one of the 159 counties in Georgia. The instruments utilized were a Public Child Welfare Questionnaire designed by the author and The Quality of Work Life Conditions/Feelings designed by Pfeiffer and Goodstein. The population of public child welfare workers employed at an agency in 1993 were surveyed. The major findings of this study revealed that: (1) Most public child welfare workers were nonsocial workers, which confirmed previous findings that most public child welfare workers do not have formal social work education; (2) The majority of public child welfare workers did not obtain their knowledge, skills, and abilities from education. The majority acquired their knowledge, skills, and abilities through on-the-job training; and (3) The study observed no significant difference between social workers� and nonsocial workers� feelings about their quality of work life
Successor systems. An investigation into the primitive recursive functions of generalised multisuccessor arithmetics, with applications to constructive algebra.
No full textAn investigation into the primitive recursive functions of generalised multisuccessor arithmetics, with applications to constructive algebra.' Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Paul Hudson Stanford* at Leicester University, England, in 1975. The above named thesis is concerned with the extension of the notion of primitive recursion to structures other than the natural numbers. Successor systems are generalisations of the arithmetics of Vu?kovi? [2], and as a class are closed under operations corresponding to direct products and quotient formation. Given a system ? we can also define a system a* which has successor functions Sax for each numeral a of ?. The formalisation used is derived from the free variable calculus of Goodstein [1]. Various forms of recursion are considered, none of which employ more than a small number of known functions. For example, given a function g from ? x ? to ? we can define f from ?* to ? as follows. f(0) = 0; f(Sax) = g(a,f(x)) Algebraic applications include the construction of groups and rings: actual examples range from the integers and polynomials to permutations, finite sets and ordinal numbers. Several relations which may hold between systems are investigated, as are the notions of anchored and decidable systems.*(supported by a Science Research Council grant) One chapter deals with the case of commuting successor functions, and another considers systems with only one successor. In an appendix we briefly investigate the further generalisation obtained by using non-unary successor functions. The author expresses his thanks to all concerned, especially his supervisor. Professor R. L. Goodstein. Contents of thesis: (1) Introduction, (2) The Integers, (3) Products, (4) Recursion, (5) The Star Operation, (6) Commutative systems, (7) Homomorphisms, (8) Groups, (9) Further recursion, (10) Decidable systems, (11) Single successor systems, (12) Polynomials; (A1) Small systems, (A2) Joint successor arithmetics, (A3) Polish Circles, (A4) A Formalisation of the Integers. References to abstract: [1] Goodstein, R.L., Recursive Number Theory, Amsterdam (1957) [2] Vu?kovi?, V., Partially ordered recursive arithmetics, Math.Scand. 7 (1959), 305-320
Stimulus Sheets for Neuroscience Critical Consumer workshop
No full textThese stimulus sheets are to use as part of the workshop Critical Consumers of Neuroscience for trainee teachers.This resource is an outcome of a wider project: Enhancing the Learning Sciences in Initial Teacher Education.The academic paper describing the original research on which the use of the stimulus sheet is based is: Weisberg, D. S., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J. (2008). The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470-477. The stimulus sheets are used with the permission of the lead author.</div
Essays on the labor force participation of older men
No full textThis work is composed of two self-contained chapters that examine the Labor Force Participation (LFP) behavior of older men in the United States. The first chapter analyzes the effect of wealth on LFP. I use an Instrumental Variables (IV) estimation approach that corrects for measurement error in wealth and unobservable taste variation across individuals. Previous studies that do not control for these factors have found that wealth has very little effect on retirement. My IV results reveal a larger wealth effect than in most previous studies; a $20k increase in wealth reduces the probability of LFP by about 1 percentage point. The instruments are local housing price growth and unanticipated inheritances. I cannot reject the hypothesis that the effects of housing and non-housing wealth on LFP are equal, although the power of my test is low. Thus, my analysis suggests that older men are equally willing to “spend” an increase in housing and non-housing wealth on earlier retirement. In the second chapter, my co-author (David Blau) and I examine trends in the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) of older men. After nearly a full century of decline, the LFPR of older men in the United States leveled off in the 1980s, and began to increase in the late 1990s. We use a time series of cross sections from 1962 to 2005 to model the LFPR of men aged 55-69, with the aim of determining whether changes in the rules governing Social Security benefits can explain these trends. Our results indicate that the decline in the LFPR from the 1960s through the 1980s cannot be explained by the increasing generosity of Social Security during this period. The recent increase in the LFPR of older men can be explained by changes in the composition of the older male population away from high school dropouts and toward college attendees and graduates. Changes in Social Security may have contributed to the recent increase as well, but this result is sensitive to specification
Peer Review for Journals: Evidence on Quality Control, Fairness, and Innovation
No full textI reviewed the published empirical evidence concerning journal peer review, which consisted of 68 papers, all but three published since 1975. Peer review improves quality, but its use to screen papers has met with limited success. Current procedures to assure quality and fairness seem to discourage scientific advancement, especially important innovations, because findings that conflict with current beliefs are often judged to have defects. Editors can use procedures to encourage the publication of papers with innovative findings such as invited papers, early-acceptance procedures, author nominations of reviewers, results-blind reviews, structured rating sheets, open peer review, and, in particular, electronic publication. Some journals are currently using these procedures. The basic principle behind the proposals is to change the decision from whether to publish a paper to how to publish itpeer review, journals, publications
Parent brand susceptibility to negative feedback effects from brand extensions: A meta‐analysis of experimental consumer findings
No full textGiven the prevalence of brand extensions in the market, it is important to consider extensions' potentially harmful effects on the parent brand, that is, negative feedback effects. This paper integrates experimental research on negative feedback effects using a meta-analytic framework. The results support previous findings for extension evaluations, parent brand breadth, parent brand image fit, and consumer task motivation on the occurrence of negative feedback effects. However, four moderator variables found in earlier work are not significant: accessibility of extension information, parent brand awareness, branding strategy, and participant type. Mixed findings related to extension fit, valence of extension information, and parent brand quality are clarified, indicating that extension fit and valence of information appear to drive negative feedback while parent brand quality does not. Four methodological factors have significant effects: within-subject-dependent variable designs, parent brand product class, type of brand, and whether the extension was evaluated, suggesting that the effects may be, in part, an artifact of background factors. The results provide insights into when brands seem vulnerable to negative feedback effects, while simultaneously identifying common market scenarios under which brands appear less susceptible. Finally, a post hoc model points to involvement and level of processing as two key constructs that may underlie the effects of moderators.Fondecyt - government of Chil
Putting Their Money Where Their Mouth Is: The Importance of Shareholder Directors Post Listing
No full textWhile Luoma and Goodstein (1999) find increased stakeholder representation on the boards of American companies, Dimovski and Brooks (2004) provide evidence that the Australian initial public offering (IPO) market does not require non equity stakeholder representation on their boards. This paper analyses the change in composition of the boards of large Australian companies post listing. We find a substantial increase in the number of directors holding equity capital in the firms in which they hold their directorships. We also find a decrease in the number of non equity stakeholder directors post listing. This suggests that directors putting their money into the firms in which they have a stewardship function is an important element in the Australian capital market.Information: Title: Putting Their Money Where Their Mouth Is: The Importance of Shareholder Directors Post Listing Author(s): William Dimovski, (School of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Deakin University), Robert Brooks, (Department of Economics and Business Statistics, Monash University)Non equity shareholders, Shareholder directors
Kongejagten - En interaktiv formidlingsapplikation til Roskilde Domkirke
No full textThis thesis explores the potential and challenges associated with the use of a smartphone application used for entertainment and learning in Roskilde Cathedral. The cathedral wanted an application that could be used by the younger audience (ages 8 to 12), who usually finds visiting the cathedral to be somewhat boring and disengaging. The exhibit that the application revolves around is the tombs and coffins of the Danish kings, who are buried in the various chapels in the cathedral. To explore this problem we drew on theory from the fields of educational games, software design for children, mobile learning and previously developed museum applications. A technical overview of the capabilities of modern smartphones was also laid out, so these capabilities could be included in the design of an application. Utilizing this theory and the initial wishes of the cathedral, we conducted an analysis of the target audience and the technical possibilities. Through this analysis we established an application design that was thought to cover the needs of the cathedral. The design focused on connecting the user to the exhibit through the smartphone by using the features of the phone to engage the user, while using the already existing education material in the church. This was done by designing a game where the visitor uses clues stored on the phone to identify kings in the cathedral. When the user believes that a king has been found and identified, the user must use the phone to scan a QR-code next to the king’s tomb. If the correct king has been found, the user is awarded a number of points based on the number of clues used and the number of wrong guesses. The design also sought to engage the user in social interactions with other guests and users by allowing them to share kings and points across phones. Another important note about designing to this specific target audience is the need to allow an experimental, trial and error based approach. The designed application was named Kongejagten (Danish for The King Hunt). Kongejagten was then implemented on the Android platform due to its free and open nature, and due to the fact that the author has previous experience with development on this platform. The implementation utilized custom Android activities, as well as including two third party libraries called zxing and android-zxinglib. These libraries are used for scanning and encoding information to and from QR-codes. The implementation of Kongejagten was then used in a small series of user tests to determine the abilities of the application to both entertain and educate the target audience. Three separate user tests were completed, as well as a review of the application with a representative from the cathedral. The tests were also complemented by openly structured interviews with the users after the tests. The results of these test showed that Kongejagten was considered to be very entertaining by the user, which confirms the initial conjecture that smartphones are well suited for this task. It also showed that the users wanted more information about the kings than was provided in the application, which suggests that Kongejagten did not fully utilize its full educational potential. However, the existence of this potential was confirmed, leading to the conclusion that further work with this type of application should utilize a more iterative based design process to better identify the needs of the end users early on.This thesis explores the potential and challenges associated with the use of a smartphone application used for entertainment and learning in Roskilde Cathedral. The cathedral wanted an application that could be used by the younger audience (ages 8 to 12), who usually finds visiting the cathedral to be somewhat boring and disengaging. The exhibit that the application revolves around is the tombs and coffins of the Danish kings, who are buried in the various chapels in the cathedral. To explore this problem we drew on theory from the fields of educational games, software design for children, mobile learning and previously developed museum applications. A technical overview of the capabilities of modern smartphones was also laid out, so these capabilities could be included in the design of an application. Utilizing this theory and the initial wishes of the cathedral, we conducted an analysis of the target audience and the technical possibilities. Through this analysis we established an application design that was thought to cover the needs of the cathedral. The design focused on connecting the user to the exhibit through the smartphone by using the features of the phone to engage the user, while using the already existing education material in the church. This was done by designing a game where the visitor uses clues stored on the phone to identify kings in the cathedral. When the user believes that a king has been found and identified, the user must use the phone to scan a QR-code next to the king’s tomb. If the correct king has been found, the user is awarded a number of points based on the number of clues used and the number of wrong guesses. The design also sought to engage the user in social interactions with other guests and users by allowing them to share kings and points across phones. Another important note about designing to this specific target audience is the need to allow an experimental, trial and error based approach. The designed application was named Kongejagten (Danish for The King Hunt). Kongejagten was then implemented on the Android platform due to its free and open nature, and due to the fact that the author has previous experience with development on this platform. The implementation utilized custom Android activities, as well as including two third party libraries called zxing and android-zxinglib. These libraries are used for scanning and encoding information to and from QR-codes. The implementation of Kongejagten was then used in a small series of user tests to determine the abilities of the application to both entertain and educate the target audience. Three separate user tests were completed, as well as a review of the application with a representative from the cathedral. The tests were also complemented by openly structured interviews with the users after the tests. The results of these test showed that Kongejagten was considered to be very entertaining by the user, which confirms the initial conjecture that smartphones are well suited for this task. It also showed that the users wanted more information about the kings than was provided in the application, which suggests that Kongejagten did not fully utilize its full educational potential. However, the existence of this potential was confirmed, leading to the conclusion that further work with this type of application should utilize a more iterative based design process to better identify the needs of the end users early on
