Non-traditional Means Research Articles

ON THE ECOLOGICAL BASIS OF INTERSPECIFIC HOMOPLASY IN CAROTENOID-BEARING SIGNALS

Evidence that similar color patterns occur in unrelated animals with different habits undermines the traditional view that homoplasy evolves through shared ecological selection pressures. Carotenoid pigments responsible for many yellow to red signals exhibit two related properties that could link ecology with appearance by nontraditional means. Ecologic homoplasy could arise through ecophenotypy because all animals must obtain carotenoids through their diet. Such homoplasy also could be hidden from view because increased carotenoid levels are more strongly encoded by decreased reflectance over ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths invisible to humans. To explore these possibilities, I examined apparent matches or mismatches between color and ecology among insectivorous (low carotenoid diet) and frugivorous (high carotenoid diet) bird species in relation to the typical yellow and black plumage pattern of insectivorous, UV-sensitive titmice (Paridae). Diagnostic features of reflectance spectra indicated that all yellow plumages resulted from carotenoids, black plumages from melanins, and olive green plumages from codeposition of both pigments. However, reflectance by carotenoid-bearing plumages correlated with diet independent of plumage pattern; compared to the insectivores, frugivores had reduced amounts of UV reflectance, and to a lesser extent, "red shifts" in longer-wavelength reflectance. Furthermore, an asymptotic decrease in amount of UV with increased redness implied that plumage reflectance of insectivorous species differed more over UV wavelengths, whereas that of frugivorous species differed more over longer wavelengths. I verified that dietary links to plumage reflectance resulted from greater amounts of plumage carotenoids in frugivores, presumably due to their carotenoid-rich diets. All of these ecological associations transcended post-mortem or post-breeding color change, and phylogeny. Thus, predictable associations between avian-visible plumage reflectance, pigmentation, and diet across evolutionary scales may arise directly (diet per se) or indirectly (honest signaling of diet) by ecophenotypy, although various genetic factors also may play a role.

Water aerobics as a non-traditional means to improve the physical condition of students

Water aerobics as a non-traditional means to improve the physical condition of students

Improving the effectiveness of physical education students non-traditional means of psychophysical training wushu

Improving the effectiveness of physical education students non-traditional means of psychophysical training wushu

Being bad isn't always good: Affective context moderates the attention bias toward negative information.

Research has demonstrated that people automatically devote more attention to negative information than to positive information. The authors conducted 3 experiments to test whether this bias is attenuated by a person's affective context. Specifically, the authors primed participants with positive and negative information using traditional (e.g., subliminal semantic priming) and nontraditional (e.g., social interactions) means and measured the amount of attention they allocated to positive and negative information. With both event-related brain potentials (Experiment 1) and the Stroop task (Experiments 2 and 3), results suggest that the attention bias to negative information is attenuated or eliminated when positive constructs are made accessible. The implications of this result for other biases to negative information and for the self-reinforcing nature of emotional disorders are discussed.

Incorporating the Hybrid Learning Model into Minority Education at a Historically Black University

Background In 2005, the regents of the University System of Maryland instituted a policy in 2005 that all students enrolling in a Maryland State University as of the fall of 2007 take on average 12 of their credits through out-of-classroom experiences and other nontraditional means. The definition of out-of-classroom experiences includes: e-learning, internships, student teaching, and a host of other activities. Founded in 1886, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) is a historically black, 1890 land grant institution and a member of the thirteen-campus University System of the State of Maryland. The student body is approximately 3,700, with 10% of the enrollment representing graduate students. UMES is located in a rural region and is the most affordable four-year institution of higher education in the state. With the institution's inexpensive tuition and minimal enrollment criteria, the university attracts a large number of students from a lower socio-economic background than is found in colleges and universities across the state. The Department of Business Management and Accounting is one of the largest departments on campus. The department has approximately 420 majors, offering programs that include Business Management, Marketing, Accounting, and Business Education. The Department of Business was chosen because of its size and adequate socio-economic representation of the UMES student body. Additionally, a historically black institution was chosen due to the lack of substantial research that focused specifically on the perceptions of African American college students with respect to e-learning. WebCt has been adopted as the course management system of choice by the University System of Maryland. UMES began integrating WebCt into their curriculum in 2001. Currently, UMES offers a large number of web-enhanced courses, a few dozen of hybrid courses, and a handful of fully online courses. Literature Review The higher-education classroom has undergone radical reformations in the last decade as a result of technological development, causing academicians across the globe to recognize the importance of technology in higher learning. Technology has illustrated that the classroom does not need to be the nucleus of learning, as networked multimedia are able to extend the teaching and learning experience (McClintock, 1999). Course websites have proved to be an effective means of delivering learning materials, with students responding positively to the quality resources they make available. Wernet, Olliges, and Delicath (2000), who surveyed students who used WebCT in a social work course, found that all of the respondents considered the online course materials beneficial to their overall learning experiences. The movement from the traditional classroom to web-enabled learning has been explained as a move from a behaviorist methodology to a constructivist one (Lewis, MacEntee, DeLaCruz, Englander, Jeffrey, Takach, Wilson, & Woodall, 2005). Koohang and Harman (2005) assert that e-learning by its very nature is rooted in constructivist ideology, where knowledge acquisition is a self-directed activity that is facilitated by an instructor. They draw correlations between elements inherent in both constructivism and e-learning including: collaboration, social discourse, problem solving, exploration, anchored instruction, critical thinking, the revisiting of information in multiple perspectives and representations, intellectual discourse, knowledge construction, and scaffolding. Much of the instructional-technology-based research that has been conducted in the past decade focused on the examination of fully online learning experiences. Significantly less attention has been paid to the blended, or hybrid, learning format. Hybrid courses blend face-to-face interaction with online learning and customarily involve the delivery of curricular materials, access to resources, submission of assignments, and online discussions that may be asynchronous or synchronous in nature. …

Training Community Members to Serve as Paraprofessionals in an Evidence-Based, Prevention Program for Parents of Preschoolers

Widespread dissemination of evidence-based programs for underserved populations may require non-traditional means of service provision. Collaboration with paraprofessionals from communities that are targeted for intervention holds promise as a delivery strategy that may make programs more accessible and acceptable, especially to parents living in low-income, urban neighborhoods. We describe a paraprofessional training program for individuals living in a community targeted for preventive intervention based on high levels of poverty and community violence. The design and implementation of the training program are described in the context of issues related to the use of paraprofessionals in community-based, preventive interventions with parents of young children. We also provide insight into lessons learned from a feasibility study as well as general guidelines for the development of paraprofessional training programs for delivery of evidence-based programs.

Distance, Turnout, and the Convenience of Voting*

Objectives. This research examines how distance factors into the costs associated with political participation. We hypothesize that the political geography of a voter's residence affects not only the likelihood that he or she will vote, but whether the voter will choose between traditional Election Day voting or nontraditional means, such as casting an absentee ballot by mail, or going to an early‐voting site.Methods. Using a geographic information system (GIS), we calculate Manhattan‐block distances between voter residences and their respective precinct and nearest early‐voting sites in Clark County, NV for the 2002 mid‐term election. We then use these calculated distances to predict, with multinomial logistic regression, the likelihood of nonvoting, precinct voting, and nontraditional voting.Results. Our evidence suggests that the cost of traveling to reach a traditional voting site is associated with nonvoting to a point, but the relationship between distance and participation is nonlinear. Distance to traditional voting sites is also highly associated with choosing to vote by mail. Would‐be nonvoters are more inclined to use proximate election‐day sites than proximate early‐voting sites, probably because they decide to vote so late in the campaign.Conclusions. Our findings have important implications for democratic theory, ongoing efforts to reform the electoral process, and the practice of voter mobilization.

Sampling CIA's New Document Retrieval System: McCone Telephone Conversations during the Six Crises Tempest

Documents recently made available at the National Archives by the CIA are accessed through non-traditional archival means: researchers use keywords at computers to obtain them. Most of the documents will be uninteresting or worthless to scholars. Some add important or colorful details to our knowledge of the Agency. An example is a small set of documents detailing 1962 telephone conversations of DCI John McCone with President Kennedy, former DCI Dulles, and former Vice President Nixon about the latter's best-selling book Six Crises, which charged Kennedy with having acted unscrupulously as a presidential candidate in 1960 by advocating covert action against Cuba.

Is the Two-Dimensional One-Component Plasma Exactly Solvable?

The model under consideration is the two-dimensional (2D) one-component plasma of pointlike charged particles in a uniform neutralizing background, interacting through the logarithmic Coulomb interaction. Classical equilibrium statistical mechanics is studied by non-traditional means. The question of the potential integrability (exact solvability) of the plasma is investigated, first at arbitrary coupling constant \Gamma via an equivalent 2D Euclidean-field theory, and then at the specific values of \Gamma=2*integer via an equivalent 1D fermionic model. The answer to the question in the title is that there is strong evidence for the model being not exactly solvable at arbitrary \Gamma but becoming exactly solvable at \Gamma=2*integer. As a by-product of the developed formalism, the gauge invariance of the plasma is proven at the free-fermion point \Gamma=2; the related mathematical peculiarity is the exact inversion of a class of infinite-dimensional matrices.

Clinical manifestations of sarin nerve gas exposure.

CHEMICAL WARFARE HAS EXisted for millennia. As far back as 1000 BC, the Chinese used arsenical smoke as a weapon. In the last century, chemical agents have been used in warfare on numerous occasions, from World War I to the Iran-Iraq conflict. The world remains vulnerable to the deliberate use of chemical agents as weapons of mass destruction. Chemical attacks can be delivered with almost any type of conventional ballistic weapon, spray device, or by nontraditional means, such as that used by the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult to launch 2 attacks in public places in Japan by using sarin gas. The first attack occurred in Matsumoto, Japan, in June 1994. The second attack occurred in a Tokyo subway in March 1995. Terrorists involved in this attack carried diluted sarin solution in plastic bags into subway trains and punctured the bags with sharpened umbrella tips. This released diluted sarin vapor into 3 convergent lines of the Tokyo subway system. This attack is the largest disaster caused by nerve gas in peacetime history. These attacks illustrated how an ill-prepared disaster management system can become overwhelmed. Sarin is a highly toxic nerve agent that can be fatal within minutes to hours. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1937 as an insecticide, although its battlefield potential was soon recognized. During World War II, Germany prepared thousands of tons of the potent nerve agents tabun and sarin but refrained from using them. Sarin was first used in wartime during the IranIraq conflict in the 1980s.

Marketing fine art on the Internet: issues and ideas

AbstractThe fine art market has grown into a $17bn industry. Yet only recently have art dealers and art buyers discovered the Internet as a viable marketing tool. As art galleries begin to move online, a fundamental question arises: are the major stakeholders willing to use this non‐traditional means to buy and sell art? This paper uses three independent studies, of artists, interior designers and organisational buyers, in North America, to analyse the characteristics of those inclined to use the Internet for this service and considers the magnitude of purchases through this medium. Study results indicate that: (1) artists are under‐represented on the Internet and disconcerted about technology issues; (2) targeting buyer segments, like interior designers, through the Internet is a viable and attractive alternative for fine art dealers; (3) organisational buyers often neglect Internet alternatives. Practical implications for those desiring to utilise the Internet to market fine art are discussed. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications

Dorothy Goes to Law School: Stories of Institutional Inertia and Response in the American Legal Academy

Although efforts have been made to include women in the legal academy, the institutional response to calls for change has been erratic. The largely white male academic hierarchy tends to resist substantive change, which inhibits law schools from fully including women. Like The Wizard of Oz who could not respond to Dorothy's demand, traditional academic institutional responses to women's voices are often inadequate, as seen in the experiences of women law students themselves. These stories demonstrate that law schools should provide non-traditional means to empower female students to communicate their needs and provoke change.

LEVERAGING RESOURCES THROUGH STRATEGIC ALLIANCES FOR WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

The Michigan Technical Education Center (M-TEC) at Bay de Noc Community College is leading the way in workforce development for Michigan's Upper Peninsula. By leveraging resources through strategic alliances with industry, government, labor, and education, the M-TEC has become a powerful tool for training solutions. A March 1998 State of Michigan initiative sought applications from community colleges interested in a no more business as usual approach to technical skills training. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) awarded the M-TEC construction grant to Bay College in January 1999; groundbreaking took place in May 1999 and the center was dedicated in March 2000. The M-TEC concept - anytime, anywhere, customized training - proved itself through dramatic first-year increases in the number of workers trained (89%), total training hours (90% ), and MEDC training grant funds (500%). This has been accomplished in part through the impressive variety of resources the M-TEC leveraged from its strategic alliances. The M-TEC's sustaining partners, a group that has doubled in size after 1 year of operation (i.e., from 9 to 18), have increased the capacity of the center, even as they have contributed to its operation's budget. Equipment the center could not afford is now in use because the supplier wants its local customers to have access to it - and because the center could provide the training laboratories to house it. Dedicated computer laboratories make workforce training simple, with resources always available when needed by business and industry. The M-TEC is generating multiple revenue streams through nontraditional means to meet the state s 5-year mandate of self-sufficiency.

A Comparison of the Academic Experiences and Achievement of University Students Entering by Traditional and Non-traditional Means

The changing demographic profile of many universities has been reflected in the increasing presence of mature-aged students on campus and the increased acceptance of non-traditional qualifications allowing entry to undergraduate programmes. Recent research has suggested that such changes have not been accompanied by a diminution of academic standards. In the present study, we examine the academic performance of students entering a university via traditional and non-traditional means using database records for three years of entry. Analysis revealed a marginal disadvantage in academic performance for students entering via non-traditional enabling programmes, but a positive effect for mature age on entry. The results were broadly consistent with earlier studies and confirm the equity goals of more open access to undergraduate study.

TOFIR: A tool of facilitating information retrieval – introduce a visual retrieval model

The paper introduces a new method for the visualization of information retrieval. Angle attributes of a document are used to construct the angle–angle-based visual space. The retrieved documents are perceived, several traditional information retrieval evaluation models are visualized and interpreted, and new non-traditional retrieval control means based on the model are explored in the two-dimensional angle display space. The impacts of different metrics on the visualization of information retrieval are discussed. Ambiguity, future research directions and other relevant issues are also addressed.

Mobile Discourse: Political Bumper Stickers as a Communication Event in Israel

The use of political bumper stickers in Israel began as a spontaneous protest medium, evolving into a routinized form of public discourse, taking place throughout the year, independently of national elections. The rules of interaction of this nontraditional means of political communication are identified and the complex relationships between the messages within their social situation are investigated using an ethnographic model. This analysis reveals that the medium does indeed constitute a structured means of expression with identifiable forms, rules, and usages, affording the person in the street a way of participating in the national discourse, bypassing traditional avenues of influence. The detailed examination of a single political bumper sticker reveals a structure parallel to the overall code, further demonstrating the intricacy of the messages. The analysis shows how this political discourse reflects social norms peculiar to Israel and how its use has become an affirmation of cultural identity. Because the fundamental properties of political bumper stickers have now been exposed, it is possible to examine how the actual use of this medium changes the structure of political agency in society through the presumption that ordinary individuals have the right of access to the public debate of national political issues, a right heretofore exclusively the prerogative of institutional power holders.

The price of water: Market-based strategies are needed to cope with scarcity

Growing population and environmental concerns are increasing the demand for California's water resources. Historically, the state has dealt with shortages by expanding supply. In the coming years, new strategies will be required to allocate water among existing and emerging uses and to create additional supplies by nontraditional means. Three techniques will form the foundation of water management in the next era: water markets, water-use efficiency and active conjunctive use. Such methods establish prices for water that more accurately reflect costs, encouraging conservation and more efficient use patterns.

Economically Disadvantaged Students in a School for the Academically Gifted: A Postpositivist Inquiry into Individual and Family Adjustment

In this paper, we report the results of an inquiry into the effects of the placement of five economical disadvantaged minority students from central Harlem, who were identified in kindergarten as potentially academically gifted through nontraditional means, in a school for gifted students. Achievement and aptitude test data and qualitative data collected during the students' first year at the school support the conclusion that the students were appropriately placed and adjusted well academically socially and emotionally. Follow-up data suggest that the students' academic careers have, in the six years since the original data were collected, for the most part progressed well. We present assertions that begin to explain why these students have succeeded academically despite being at-risk for educational disadvantage. These assertions concern the students themselves, their families, their school, and Project Synergy, through whose activities the students were identified as potentially gifted.

Assessing Prior Learning of Adults in a Coordinated Program

Adult students entering a coordinated program may have already acquired extensive knowledge and skills from previous college coursework and work experience. Evaluating that learning in order to award college credit has been successfully accomplished by traditional and nontraditional means. Transcript and course description evaluation, College Level Examination Program (CLEP) tests, Dantes tests and challenge exams developed by course professors have been used to award credit for didactic courses. Adapting methods used throughout the college, faculty members assess knowledge acquired through experiential learning for students 25 years and older by using portfolio evaluation or performance appraisal. Using competencies from the first food service management supervised practice, students develop a portfolio including their resume, examples documenting proficiency for each competency and a letter from employer substantiating achievement. To obtain credit for the health care systems supervised practice, where interviewing skills are developed, students document work experiences and obtain a diet history from a diabetic patient at a local hospital while being observed by two faculty members. Students analyze findings using a computer program and complete the nutrition care plan, recommending appropriate medical nutrition therapy. Faculty members assess prior learning at least one semester before course is to be scheduled. Partial or complete credit and hours may be awarded for supervised practice. Credit cannot be obtained for final supervised practices in medical nutrition therapy, food service systems management or community nutrition, as these supervised practices are the hallmark of the program. Students achieving credit by these methods have been successful in higher level courses and supervised practices as well as on the registration exam.

Overview of recent topics in clinical pharmacology of anticancer agents.

The rationale for studying the clinical pharmacology of antineoplastic agents is that the information obtained will result in enhanced drug development and enhanced or improved clinical use. A great deal of effort has been expended in studying the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of investigational and noninvestigational antineoplastic agents. More recently, a deeper appreciation has developed regarding the importance of the metabolism of antineoplastic agents and the potential role of metabolites in their activity or toxicity, as well as the potential for drug-drug interactions. Investigators studying the clinical pharmacology of antineoplastic agents face an increasingly challenging task as new agents continue to be developed. Some of these challenges arise from the enhanced potency of new agents, resulting in increased difficulty in measuring such agents in biological matrices. Furthermore, as agents have been developed to affect specific biological targets, the necessity of assessing pharmacodynamics at the biochemical or molecular level has become increasingly important. In addition, development of agents with cytostatic, as opposed to cytotoxic, properties poses a further challenge to assessment of pharmacologic effect. In addressing these challenges, a great deal of effort has been expended to develop increasingly sensitive analytical chemical techniques, in evaluating alternative biological matrices, such as saliva, in which to monitor drug concentrations in a less invasive fashion, and in developing limited sampling strategies to assess both the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of antineoplastic agents. Similarly, a great deal of effort has been expended in providing suitable means for assessing the numerous novel targets for which antineoplastic agents are being developed. These include the assessment of cell cycle kinetics and specific oncoproteins, definition of cell damage such as cleavable complexes, and formation of drug-macromolecular adducts in suitable target cells. Additional effort is being expended to explore nontraditional means of drug delivery. In this regard, the increasing importance of orally administered agents reflects a fundamental change in the approach to antineoplastic drug delivery. Finally, the increased computational power made available by faster personal computers has facilitated a number of innovative modeling techniques involving population modeling, modeling of combination chemotherapy, and assessment of drug-drug interactions.