Early Performance Research Articles

Factors Associated with Academic Achievements of Students in Mathematics

This study is conducted to find out the factors which are associated with students’ academic achievements in the subject of mathematics in different higher education institutions which are based in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The data is collected through a structured questionnaire from Bachelor of Studies (BS) 5th semester program of all the academic departments of well-known government educational institutions of Peshawar. All academic departments, except the departments of mathematics were selected, especially where the subject of mathematics is taught as compulsory or general course to the undergraduate students. The collected data is analysed on SPSS-20. For the analysis purpose mean, standard deviation, T-test, chi-square, and odd ratios are used. The results show that earlier performance such as primary level, attitude toward mathematics, difficulty of mathematics, study hours and self-confidence in mathematics learning are associated with students’ academic achievement in mathematics.

Operationalizing compensation over time in neurodegenerative disease.

Operationalizing compensation over time in neurodegenerative disease.

Women Dancing the Morris in Fletcher and Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen, 1613–2015

ABSTRACTThis essay analyses how the morris dance in The Two Noble Kinsmen – a crucial moment in the play’s treatment of gender and class rank – intervenes in seventeenth-century debates about the cultural function of morris dancing and especially of women’s roles within it. The essay considers what morris dancing might have signified at the play’s composition and earliest performances by analysing it alongside its courtly source, seventeenth-century pamphlets and dances inserted in other professional plays, and it examines how modern performances have remade the scene. While the play text empowers its female dancers, most twentieth- and twenty-first-century performances have limited their authority and made the dance into a scene that highlights the oppression of women. Two recent student performances in the USA and New Zealand have reframed the play’s morris as a dance that enables women to embrace playful bawdiness, seek reward, or resist social expectations.

Nobody Rich or Famous: A Family Memoir by Richard Shelton

Reviewed by: Nobody Rich or Famous: A Family Memoir by Richard Shelton W. T. Pfefferle Richard Shelton, Nobody Rich or Famous: A Family Memoir. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2016. 288 pp. Cloth, $35; paper, $19.95. Richard Shelton's Nobody Rich or Famous is a nuanced memoir of his family covering more than one hundred years in places from Kansas to California but centered on their generations-long link to Boise, Idaho. The foundation of the book is a collection of "diaries" kept by his mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother in ledgers, notebooks, and on loose-leaf pages. And while the entries are often terse, they read like rustic poetry. In his grandmother Charlotte's diary from 1943, she writes: "Got lumber for chicken house. Starting building. Wind blew it down" (155). The entry is representative in tone and content with much of the journals. The reader experiences life on the Plains of Shelton's Depression-era youth in these miniature studies. Shelton tells a variety of tales from the family lore. As they must be decades old, stories are sometimes fuzzy, but he uses [End Page 233] them to paint a sprawling portrait of a family that fits the book's title. These were not great people, but survivors, people who faced challenges from alcohol, poverty, and hard times, yet persevered. In the prologue, Shelton talks about the family history like a long-running play: I am the last living member of that cast, chasing the ghosts of our earlier performances and finding that even most of the third-rate houses we performed in have been torn down long ago. We worked hard and our successes were few and temporary, but we never played tragedies. We were good for sentimental comedies, pathos, and melodrama. Above all, we bounced back. (3) Any memoir is a journey, of course, and Shelton's includes trips to dusty libraries, down dirt roads, and into his own admittedly selective memory. And Nobody Rich or Famous often returns to the book's research itself. Traveling old roads he remembers from his youth, Shelton finds that much has changed. Schools are now parking lots. Houses are different—streets, even towns. Just as he hits genealogical dead ends, he hits real-world dead ends, finding himself scaling fences and walking through fields to see if a ranch or a house is as he remembers it. The American West that Shelton finds during his research is not the one of his youth—the sprawl and modernization doing its best to hide the stories he seeks: I cross Chinden Boulevard as quickly as I can. I should hit the Strawberry Glen Road any minute. Whoa! I'm on Highway 44 already, and it's a wide major artery heading due north. The Highway 44 I knew ran east and west on the other side of the river. What happened to the beautiful Strawberry Glen Road that meandered through cottonwood and willow bosques along the river? Gone. (109) Despite the foundation the diaries bring, they never hold Shelton's attention for long. Their authors remain inscrutable: his great-grandmother, Josie, a Kansas farmwife; the resilient and beautiful Charlotte, his grandmother; his flawed and battered mother, Hazel. [End Page 234] The richest part of the book is the detailed examination of Shelton's relationship with his father, Red, the alcoholic bootlegger and house painter. Red dragged his family from state to state, house to house, each home filled with the threat of violence and menace, each painted lovingly by him as a contrast. Shelton's fears of and devotion to his father are told unflinchingly throughout the book, up to and including his role as his father's caretaker at the end. To call the relationship conflicted doesn't begin to convey its impact. In the last days of Red's life, Shelton takes his grandmother on a drive for milkshakes and she tells him, "He wasn't always the way you remember him as a child. When he was younger, he was different. I don't know how to describe it. He was a good man who made a lot of bad decisions" (279). The book is a difficult...

Sustainable life-span of WSN nodes using participatory devices in pervasive environment

Wireless sensor network being a dominant prerequisite in the modern pervasive environment has nodes connected with multi-hop to transmit and reinforce continuous monitoring with real-time updates from the field environment. To achieve pervasiveness integrating wireless and physical devices is unavoidable. Numerous self-organized tiny sensor nodes cooperate with each other to form the clusters and the most prominent node act as cluster head (CH). The cluster head pioneered based on its battery forte whose failure affects rest of the communications. In this paper, we discuss on the essential of idle resource sharing using participatory devices as relay nodes along with node failure rate and node density to achieve reliable communication. The earlier performances are observed and results are revealed. Hence we concentrate on minimizing the task of CH using relay nodes such as participatory devices and the faulty nodes are identified over Poisson distribution which observes the failure probability without affecting communication and reduced resource consumption.

Revitalization and Socialization of Daeng Dance in Purbalingga, Indonesia

<p>The purpose of the study is to know and depict the revitalization and socialization of Daeng dance in purbalingga, Indonesia. This study used a qualitative method. The relevant techniques of data collection to the method are observation, interview, and documentation. The data obtained are analyzedusing three ways; they are data reduction, data display, conclusion and verification. The results showed that revitalizing Daeng dance occurred in its earliest performances, by means of innovating the foregoing Daeng dance without leaving its characteristics. The revitalization was done toward the dance’s motion, accompaniment, makeup, wardrobe, stage, sounds, lighting, and floor patterns, as well as there is a change in its function; as the media of spreading Islam in the past to nowadays just being an entertainment. After the process of revitalization, Daeng dance is then socialized through two ways of deployment; they are formal and informal processes. This dance’s socialization in this study occurs through direct performance and mass media. </p>

Cognitive function fifty-six years after surgical treatment of temporal lobe epilepsy: A case study

We report a long-term follow-up investigation of a patient who was operated in 1954 to relieve intractable temporal lobe seizures characterized by automatism and amnesia. Neuropsychological review at 16 months after surgery showed a slight residual impairment of verbal comprehension and verbal recall and good nonverbal skills. Seizure-free since the operation except for two attacks in the early postoperative years, the patient has been off medication for 25 years and has pursued a successful career as an artist.Our investigation at 56 postoperative years focused on cognitive skills, with some emphasis on learning and memory; a clinical examination was also performed, and the anatomical extent of the resection was determined on 3-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging. Four age- and IQ-appropriate women were tested as healthy control subjects. The patient showed material-specific impairments in language and verbal memory compared with the control subjects and also compared with her own earlier performance, but her performance on other cognitive tasks did not differ from that of the control subjects. Thus, her specific deficits had worsened over time, and she was also impaired compared with healthy individuals of her age, but her deficits remained confined to the verbal sphere, consistent with her temporal lobe seizure focus and surgery.

The Pierrot ensembles: chronicle and catalogue, 1912-2012

2012 is the centenary of the first performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, Op. 21, and over the last hundred years its mixed chamber ensemble has become, in all its protean forms, a principal line-up for modern music. This book, the first of its kind, chronicles the ensemble’s evolution from Pierrot’s earliest performances, monitoring its influence on the Continent as well as upon Walton, Britten, Lutyens and Searle in Britain. In particular, it watches the growth of The Pierrot Players (later The Fires of London), one of the most galvanizing groups in post-war British music, and looks carefully at the social dynamics among its players and composers, notably Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle. The influence of Pierrot, however, has not been confined to Europe and Britain. In the final section the author catalogues over 400 principal works for ‘Pierrot Ensembles’ – with or without singer – drawn from both sides of the Atlantic. An appendix includes the first reprinting of Stephen Pruslin’s text for Birtwistle’s controversial Monodrama (1967). The book is richly illustrated with photographs, drawings, music examples and diagrams.

Updating a generic screening approach in sub- or supercritical fluid chromatography for the enantioresolution of pharmaceuticals

This work focusses on the update of a generic chiral screening approach in sub- or supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC). Newly generated data with 2-propanol-containing mobile phases on 12 polysaccharide-based stationary phases was combined with previous data obtained using methanol-containing mobile phases. As modifiers 2-propanol and methanol were selected for their earlier performance. An evaluation of the most appropriate solvent strength is made and the enantioselective behaviour of the chromatographic systems is discussed. A comparison of the systems is made and their complementarity investigated by analyzing the data by different means, e.g. principal component analysis. The generic screening sequence is proposed by selecting the most enantioselective and complementary systems. This allows updating an existing screening strategy. With the novel screening, all compounds of a 57-compounds test set were separated (48 baseline), on at least one of four selected systems, within an analysis time of 30min. The applicability and performance of the updated screening was demonstrated with a compound from the test set, i.e. alprenolol.

Developmental Dynamics of Emotion and Cognition Processes in Preschoolers

Dynamic relations during the preschool years across processes of control and understanding in the domains of emotion and cognition were examined. Participants were 263 children (42% non-White) and their mothers who were seen first when the children were 3 years old and again when they were 4. Results indicated dynamic dependence among the processes studied. Specifically, change in cognitive processes of control and understanding were dependent upon initial levels of the other processes. Changes in emotion control and understanding were not predicted by earlier performance in the other processes. Findings are discussed with regard to the constructs of control and understanding and the developmental interrelations among emotion and cognitive processes.

Market Vision and the Front End ofNPDfor Radical Innovation: The Impact of Moderating Effects

“Market vision” is a mental model that helps focus the organization on a new market application for an advanced technology during the fuzzy front end of the new product development process. Previous research demonstrates that firms involved in the development of radically new, high‐tech products need to develop a market visioning competence (MVC) in order to develop an effective market vision (MV), and these capabilities, in turn, have been found to have a positive effect on key aspects of the early performance (EP) of these firms—specifically, the ability to attract capital and early success with customers. Based on a major empirical study of the nanotechnology sector, the research described in this paper takes an important step forward by focusing on factors in both the external and internal environment of the firm, and their moderating impact on the paths that linkMVC,MV, andEP. External structural factors relevant to the firm's competitive environment as well as internal factors, including firm resources, size, incumbency, and technology, are shown to have significant moderating effects both on the way in whichMVunfolds and on its capacity for affecting positive returns for the firm when undertaking radical innovation. Five of seven hypotheses were supported by the research. Both level of incumbency (the extent to which the firm has taken part in previous generations of a given technology) and resource availability are shown to positively impact the link betweenMVCandMV. Also, appropriability (i.e., protection for innovations) and reputation of the firm were found to positively impact the path toEP. Finally, a low level of industry concentration—that is, a large number of small firms—were found to have a positive effect on the path toEP. In sum, the findings support the structure of the model and the majority of the hypothesized moderating relationships, suggesting important implications for management.

Editorial: Capturing Developmental Trajectories of Change in Persons With Intellectual and Developmental Disability

Editorial: Capturing Developmental Trajectories of Change in Persons With Intellectual and Developmental Disability

“A Kyng That Ruled All By Lust”: Richard II in Elizabethan Literature

Since the earliest performances of Shakespeare’s Richard II, parallels between its tragic protagonist and Elizabeth I have not gone unnoticed – not least by Elizabeth herself. This essay attempts to move beyond that parallel, examining its implications not only for readings of Shakespeare’s play or Elizabethan imaginings of the queen, but also to the relationship of sexuality and historiography in early modern writing. Richard and Elizabeth both embody a transgressive femininity that exposes, rather than contradicts, the gender norms of monarchy; this exposure becomes, in Elizabethan historical writing, inextricable from the crisis of legitimacy at the heart of Tudor dynastic narratives.

Portrait of an Actress: Judith Malina in Maudie and Jane

The radical avant-garde has aged profoundly. Yet, led by director Judith Malina, the Living Theatre, founded in 1947, remains the longest surviving political theatre collective in the US. The Living Theatre opened its doors at a new theatre/home on New York City's Lower East Side in 2007, where Malina directed a much lauded revival of the company's groundbreaking 1963 production of Kenneth Brown's The Brig, and performed the role of Maudie in the premiere production of Hanon Reznikov's adaptation of Doris Lessing's Maudie and Jane. Vibrant and luminous at 81, an aged Venus rising from the half shell, Malina (dis)played the decaying and decrepit Maudie, standing naked onstage, sensually and lovingly bathed by Pat Russell, playing Jane. Malina's ageing activist/artist's body and voice spoke volumes about decades of societal and cultural transformations, of sexual revolutions, and of wounds that never heal. Evoking Pierre Nora's ‘sites of memory’—this performative lieu de memoire ‘talks back’ on many levels, both in contemporary contexts and re-membering the zeitgeist of Malina's earlier performances—nearly naked, strident and much younger in the Living Theatres’ legendary production of Paradise Now (1968–70), and eloquently, flamboyantly anarchist, if too old, playing Antigone in Malina's adaptation of Brecht's version of Sophocles play (1967–84). This essay analyses the mise en scène and the reception of Maudie and Jane in light of the working processes and performance history of director/performer/inspirator Malina. Finally, the challenges and hope made visible and corporeal in Malina's on- and off-stage performances are explored.

Market Vision and Market Visioning Competence: Impact on Early Performance for Radically New, High‐Tech Products*

Having the “right” market vision (MV) in new product scenarios involving high degrees of uncertainty has been shown to help firms achieve a significant competitive advantage, which can ultimately lead to superior financial results. Despite today's increased rate of radical innovation, and hence the importance of effective vision, relatively little research has been undertaken to improve our understanding of this phenomenon. The exploratory and empirical investigation undertaken herewith responds to this research gap by focusing on MV and its precursor, market visioning competence (MVC), for radically new, high-tech products. MV is a clear and specific mental model/image that organizational members have of a desired and important product-market for a new advanced technology, and MVC is a set of individual and organizational capabilities that enable the linking of advanced technologies to a future market opportunity. Based on samples of high-tech firms involved in early technology developments, the measurement study indicates that five factors comprise MV (i.e., clarity, magnetism, specificity, form, and scope) and that four factors underlie MVC (i.e., networking, idea driving, proactive market orientation, and market learning tools). Structural equation modeling is used to demonstrate that MVC significantly and positively impacts MV and that each of these constructs significantly and positively influences certain aspects of early performance (EP) in new product development. This is the first empirical study to develop a comprehensive set of scales to measure these constructs and then to combine them in a model by which to examine their interrelationships.

The Long‐Run Performance of Sponsored and Conventional Spin‐Offs

A sponsored spin‐off takes place when an equity stake in a subsidiary is sold to an outside investor before going public. The stock return performance of a sample of 57 sponsored spin‐offs from 1994 to 2005 is significantly negative over a three‐year period following the spin‐off date. The parent firms' stock performance for the year preceding (following) the spin‐off date are below average (average) suggesting that their earlier performances were adversely affected by their subsidiaries and motivated the parents to spin them off. We also find that parent firms underinvest in the subsidiary prior to the spin‐off, which could have motivated the subsidiary to seek outside funding sources before going public.

Organization of Medical Care to Children with Road Traffic Injury in the Rostov Region

Objective: to analyze the efficiency of the Rostov Region’s medical care service for children with severe traumatic injuries due to road traffic accidents. Results. It has been established that the service meets the generally accepted stepwise principles and has a multilevel network of hospitals, which allows the earliest performance of the required volume of medical care in relation to the pattern and severity of lesions. It has been shown that 58.3% of the children with severe traumatic lesions are primarily admitted to the central district hospitals and emergency care ones that are aimed at rendering medical aid to the adult population. Thus, medical care is delivered to the above contingent by non-pediatric surgical and resuscitative-anesthetic services. Conclusion. By keeping in mind the specific features of the emergency medical system existing in the region, the authors propose its further development, by organizing interregional centers on the basis of a number of central regional hospitals for the treatment of children with traumatic lesions (among other things, by allocating pediatric beds in the intensive care units). The stepwise solution of this problem is currently being done in the Rostov Region in two main directions: 1) organization by developing a round-the-clock advisory subdivision (with an exiting sanitary aviation team) on the basis of – the regional children’s clinical hospital and 2) methodical maintenance of multidisciplinary h°spitals in delivering medical care to different age-groups children. Key words: road traffic accidents, emergency medical service, children, traumatic lesions.

Self‐Regulation in Goal Striving: Individual Differences and Situational Moderators of the Goal‐Framing/Performance Link1

We propose that negative goal framing (i.e., defining a goal as a negative state to be avoided) can adversely affect performance. Study 1 (N = 133) revealed that negative goal framing predicted poorer future performance independent of goal level, expectancy, and earlier performance. Study 2 (N = 188) examined the relation between goal framing and performance at 2 times in the academic year, and with respect to individual differences in defensive pessimism. As predicted, the negative goal‐framing/poorer‐performance link was greater on a later exam (after receiving feedback) than an earlier one, and was greater for nondefensive pessimists than for defensive pessimists. The findings implicate self‐regulatory processes in understanding how goal framing affects performance.

The Effect of Small Business Managers’ Growth Motivation on Firm Growth: A Longitudinal Study

This study addresses the role of small business managers’ growth motivation for business growth, taking into account the important effects of previous motives and feedback from earlier performance. We hypothesize that small business managers’ growth motivation has a unique influence on firm outcome measured as growth in sales and in number of employees. Data were gathered from two different Swedish samples of small firms using telephone interviews. Using cross–lagged regression analysis, we find support for our hypotheses when examining employment growth, but only partial support when examining sales.

The Long-Run Performance of Sponsored and Conventional Spin-Offs

Unlike a conventional spin-off, a sponsored spin-off takes place when the subsidiary to be divested sells an equity stake to an outside investor before going public, thereby receiving a substantial capital infusion. We find that the stock return performance of a sample of 57 sponsored spin-offs from 1994 through 2005 is significantly negative over a three-year period following the spin-off date. In contrast, 182 conventional spin-offs over same interval record an average return performance. The parent firms' stock performance for the year preceding (following) the spin-off date is below-average (average), suggesting that their earlier performance was adversely affected by the subsidiary and motivated the parent to spin it off. In support of this contention, we find that parent firms tended to under-invest in the subsidiary prior to the spin-off, due to the subsidiary's limited growth opportunities. This under-investment, in turn, could have motivated the subsidiary to seek outside funding sources before going public.