Introducing the Student Editorial Board: Strengthening the future of school psychology and School Psychology Quarterly.

Introduces the new Student Editorial Board for School Psychology Quarterly. Along with the Research Design and Methodology Section and the Book Review Section, which made their inaugural appearance in the Winter 1998 issue, the Student Editorial Board is intended to strengthen both our journal and our field as we move into the next century. It is expected that the Student Editorial Board will result in symbiotic benefits for both our field and the board members themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Regional cerebral volume loss associated with verbal learning and memory in dementia of the Alzheimer type.

Twenty-seven research participants with dementia of the Alzheimer type were studied with the California Verbal Learning Test (D. C. Delis, J. H. Kramer, E. Kaplan, & B. A. Ober, 1987) and standardized volume measures of the mesial temporal cortical gray matter, neocortical gray matter, thalamus, and caudate nuclei, from magnetic resonance imaging. A pattern of atrophic brain changes in the mesial temporal lobes (MTL) and the thalamus, with relatively less severe atrophy in the neocortical gray matter, was associated with poorer learning of the word list. Similar patterns of brain atrophy were observed for measures of delayed recall and recognition hits. However, for delayed recall, neither contribution was statistically significant, and for recognition hits, MTL was only at the trend level for significance. These results provide evidence that the verbal memory deficit of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is associated not only with the mesial temporal limbic cortex, thought to be the site of earliest and most severe pathology in AD, but also with damage in the thalamus. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An investigation of governance frameworks for public projects in Norway and the UK

This paper describes four case studies which formed a key part of an investigation into public investment project governance frameworks in Norway and the UK. The studies looked at how the embedded governance principles worked out in practice, how they affected PM, and how consistent their effects were with their aims. Conclusion is made about the actual effects of the frameworks, and various areas for improvement or further study are highlighted.     

Unexpected discoveries and S-invention of design requirements: important vehicles for a design process

Designers, during a conceptual design process, do not just synthesize solutions that satisfy initially given requirements, but also invent design issues or requirements that capture important aspects of the given problem. How do they do this? What becomes the impetus for the invention of important issues or requirements? So-called ‘unexpected discoveries', the acts of attending to visuo-spatial features in sketches which were not intended when they were drawn, are believed to contribute to it. The purpose of the present research is to verify this hypothesis. Analysing the cognitive processes of a practising architect in a design session, we found that in about a half of his entire design process there were bi-directional relations between unexpected discoveries and the invention of issues or requirements. Not only did unexpected discoveries become the driving force for the invention of issues or requirements, but also the occurrence of invention, in turn, tended to cause new unexpected discoveries. This has provided empirical evidence for two anecdotal views of designing. First, designing is a situated act; designers invent design issues or requirements in a way situated in the environment in which they design. We call inventions of this sort situated-invention (S-invention). Secondly, a design process progresses in such a way that the problem-space and the solution-space co-evolve. Further, this has brought a pedagogical implication as well as an insight about an important aspect of learning by experience in design.     

Filtration in coal liquefaction.: 2. Relation between digestion conditions and filtration rate

In systems for the liquefaction of coal by solvent extraction, removal of the undissolved solids from the liquefaction products is a fundemental part of the process. For separation of solids by filtration to be economically viable, it is essential to achieve high filtration rates. The influence of the extraction conditions, temperature, residence time and coal feed size, on the rate of filtration has been investigated. It has been shown that the rate of filtration is sensitive to the presence of a gel-like intermediate formed during the dissolution of the coal. The formation of this intermediate imposes limitations on the choice of digestion conditions, in particular the coal feed size. However, by inducing polymerization, the gel can be stabilized, thus allowing significantly improved filtration rates to be achieved.     

Block-processing adaptive filter for human eye movements

Adaptive processing techniques can be divided into two categories: block processing and recursive methods. With block processing methods, incoming data are divided into blocks, and each block is processed as a whole to estimate predictor coefficients. With recursive methods, predictor parameters are updated as each new data point becomes available and computed thorugh a set of recursive algorithms. In this paper, five block processing adaptive filters are used in the prediction of the human eye movements. They are two-point-linear predictor (TPLP), five-point-quadratic predictor (FPQP), nine-point-cubic predictor (NPCP), polynomial-filter predictor 1 (PFP1), which is a linear convex combination of a TPLP and an FPQP, and polynomial-filter predictor 2 (PFP2), which is a linear convex combination of a TPLP, as FPQP, and an NPCP. These predictors were tested with various signals such as saccadic eye movements, sinusoidal, cubic, triangular, and parabolic signals. The results show that the TPLP is the best predictor for triangular signal and the NPCP is the best predictor for sinusoidal signal. Conversely, the FPQP is the best predictor for parabolic and cubic signals. The results also suggest that the PFP1 and PFP2 show significant improvement over that of the TPLP, FPQP, and NPCP in long-range prediction.     

Organizational adoption of preemployment drug testing.

This study explored the adoption of preemployment drug testing by 360 organizations. Survival models were developed that included internal organizational and labor market factors hypothesized to affect the likelihood of adoption of drug testing. Also considered was another set of variables that included social and political variables based on institutional theory. An event history analysis using Cox regressions indicated that both internal organizational and environmental variables predicted adoption of drug testing. Results indicate that the higher the proportion of drug testers in the worksite's industry, the more likely it would be to adopt drug testing. Also, the extent to which an organization uses an internal labor market, voluntary turnover rate, and the extent to which management perceives drugs to be a problem were related to likelihood of adoption of drug testing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)