Assessing the effects of professionals' career decision -making on their participation reasons in continuing education in Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between working professionals' Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy beliefs (CDMSE beliefs) and their reasons for participating in in-service master's level programs in Taiwan. ^ The data collection instruments used were Grotelueschen's (1985) Participation Reasons Scale (PRS), and Betz, Klein, and Taylor's (1996) Career Decision-Making Self-Efficacy-Short Form (CDMSE-SF), and a Demographic Data Form (DDF) developed specifically for this study. ^ Surveys were administered to 800 working professionals who participated in inservice master's level programs at 22 Taiwanese universities. The survey was conducted in May 2004. Data were analyzed by simple descriptive statistics, principal component factor analysis, and multiple regression. Four factors of participation reasons were found and five components of CDMSE beliefs were scored. ^ Five components of CDMSE beliefs are structured into the CDMSE-SF instrument: Self-Appraisal, Occupational Information, Goal-Selection, Planning, and Problem Solving. The reasons for participation found in this study were: Professional Improvement and Development, Professional Service, Personal Benefit and Job Security, and Professional Competence and Collegial Interaction. Pearson-product moment correlations revealed significant positive correlations between the five CDMSE subscales and the four factors of participation reasons. Multiple regression analysis revealed that participants' beliefs in their abilities to obtain information about occupations accounted for the preponderance of variance of scores on the Participation Reasons Scale (PRS). ^ This study concluded that professionals who believed that they were efficacious in obtaining information about occupations or professions tended to believe that the four reasons for participation represented by the factors of the PRS were important to them in making the decision to participate in continuing education. Additionally, it was noted that the reasons for participations for professionals who did not feel confident in their abilities to find such information could not be determined. ^ Recommendations are offered to assist those individuals responsible for developing recruiting programs in continuing education for professionals in Taiwan. These recommendations focus only on strategies intended to attract this target population of professionals who believe that they are efficacious in obtaining information about occupations. ^

International stock portfolio selection and performance measures recognizing higher moments of return distributions

Since the seminal works of Markowitz (1952), Sharpe (1964), and Lintner (1965), numerous studies on portfolio selection and performance measure have been based upon the mean-variance framework. However, several researchers (e.g., Arditti (1967, and 1971), Samuelson (1970), and Rubinstein (1973)) argue that the higher moments cannot be neglected unless there is reason to believe that: (i) the asset returns are normally distributed and the investor's utility function is quadratic, or (ii) the empirical evidence demonstrates that higher moments are irrelevant to the investor's decision. Based on the same argument, this dissertation investigates the impact of higher moments of return distributions on three issues concerning the 14 international stock markets.^ First, the portfolio selection with skewness is determined using: the Polynomial Goal Programming in which investor preferences for skewness can be incorporated. The empirical findings suggest that the return distributions of international stock markets are not normally distributed, and that the incorporation of skewness into an investor's portfolio decision causes a major change in the construction of his optimal portfolio. The evidence also indicates that an investor will trade expected return of the portfolio for skewness. Moreover, when short sales are allowed, investors are better off as they attain higher expected return and skewness simultaneously.^ Second, the performance of international stock markets are evaluated using two types of performance measures: (i) the two-moment performance measures of Sharpe (1966), and Treynor (1965), and (ii) the higher-moment performance measures of Prakash and Bear (1986), and Stephens and Proffitt (1991). The empirical evidence indicates that higher moments of return distributions are significant and relevant to the investor's decision. Thus, the higher moment performance measures should be more appropriate to evaluate the performances of international stock markets. The evidence also indicates that various measures provide a vastly different performance ranking of the markets, albeit in the same direction.^ Finally, the inter-temporal stability of the international stock markets is investigated using the Parhizgari and Prakash (1989) algorithm for the Sen and Puri (1968) test which accounts for non-normality of return distributions. The empirical finding indicates that there is strong evidence to support the stability in international stock market movements. However, when the Anderson test which assumes normality of return distributions is employed, the stability in the correlation structure is rejected. This suggests that the non-normality of the return distribution is an important factor that cannot be ignored in the investigation of inter-temporal stability of international stock markets. ^

Crack tip stress study for elastic-perfectly plastic materials with some applications

The problems of plasticity and non-linear fracture mechanics have been generally recognized as the most difficult problems of solid mechanics. The present dissertation is devoted to some problems on the intersection of both plasticity and non-linear fracture mechanics. The crack tip is responsible for the crack growth and therefore is the focus of fracture science. The problem of crack has been studied by an army of outstanding scholars and engineers in this century, but has not, as yet, been solved for many important practical situations. The aim of this investigation is to provide an analytical solution to the problem of plasticity at the crack tip for elastic-perfectly plastic materials and to apply the solution to a classical problem of the mechanics of composite materials.^ In this work, the stresses inside the plastic region near the crack tip in a composite material made of two different elastic-perfectly plastic materials are studied. The problems of an interface crack, a crack impinging an interface at the right angle and at arbitrary angles are examined. The constituent materials are assumed to obey the Huber-Mises yielding condition criterion. The theory of slip lines for plane strain is utilized. For the particular homogeneous case these problems have two solutions: the continuous solution found earlier by Prandtl and modified by Hill and Sokolovsky, and the discontinuous solution found later by Cherepanov. The same type of solutions were discovered in the inhomogeneous problems of the present study. Some reasons to prefer the discontinuous solution are provided. The method is also applied to the analysis of a contact problem and a push-in/pull-out problem to determine the critical load for plasticity in these classical problems of the mechanics of composite materials.^ The results of this dissertation published in three journal articles (two of which are under revision) will also be presented in the Invited Lecture at the 7$\rm\sp{th}$ International Conference on Plasticity (Cancun, Mexico, January 1999). ^

Detecting deception: Identifying differences in liars' and truth tellers' verbal strategies

Deception research has traditionally focused on three methods of identifying liars and truth tellers: observing non-verbal or behavioral cues, analyzing verbal cues, and monitoring changes in physiological arousal during polygraph tests. Research shows that observers are often incapable of discriminating between liars and truth tellers with better than chance accuracy when they use these methods. One possible explanation for observers' poor performance is that they are not properly applying existing lie detection methods. An alternative explanation is that the cues on which these methods — and observers' judgments — are based do not reliably discriminate between liars and truth tellers. It may be possible to identify more reliable cues, and potentially improve observers' ability to discriminate, by developing a better understanding of how liars and truth tellers try to tell a convincing story. ^ This research examined (a) the verbal strategies used by truthful and deceptive individuals during interviews concerning an assigned activity, and (b) observers' ability to discriminate between them based on their verbal strategies. In Experiment I, pre-interview instructions manipulated participants' expectations regarding verifiability; each participant was led to believe that the interviewer could check some types of details, but not others, before deciding whether the participant was being truthful or deceptive. Interviews were then transcribed and scored for quantity and type of information provided. In Experiment II, observers listened to a random sample of the Experiment I interviews and rendered veracity judgments; half of the observers were instructed to judge the interviews according to the verbal strategies used by liars and truth tellers and the other half were uninstructed. ^ Results of Experiment I indicate that liars and truth tellers use different verbal strategies, characterized by a differential amount of detail. Overall, truthful participants provided more information than deceptive participants. This effect was moderated by participants' expectations regarding verifiability such that truthful participants provided more information only with regard to verifiable details. Results of Experiment II indicate that observers instructed about liars' and truth tellers' verbal strategies identify them with greater accuracy than uninstructed observers. ^

Marketing A Hospitality Program And Its Product

In his dialogue entitled - Marketing A Hospitality Program and Its Product - Jürgen Chopard, Dr. es Sciences (Economics) Director, Centre International de Glion, Glion, Switzerland, Dr. Chopard initially offers: “The recruitment of qualified personnel is extremely difficult in an industry with a poor image; where career paths are not well defined. The author discusses the employment of marketing management techniques to improve the positioning of hospitality education and create a more attractive perception of the hotel industry.” As outlined in the above paragraph, Dr. Chopard vectors-in on marketing strategies from two standpoints; the educational side with its focus on curriculum, and the larger, industry side with its emphasis on public perception and service. These are not necessarily, nor should they be viewed as disparate elements. “ Although some professionals may see schools of hospitality education catering to two markets, students on one hand and industry on the other, in fact, their needs should be viewed as the same and hence a single market,” Dr. Chopard says to bolster his assertion. “The marketing concept is a management orientation that holds that the key task of the organization is to determine the needs and wants of target markets and to adapt the organization to delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than its competitor,” the author confides, with an attribution. From these information/definition leanings, Dr. Chopard continues on a path that promotes the Centre International de Glion, Glion, Switzerland, which he is affiliated with. Why, because they endorse the same principles he is explaining to you. That’s not a bad thing. Essentially, what Dr. Chopard wants you to know is, education and business management are synonymous and therefore should share the same marketing designs and goals. “It is hard to believe that as critically important a sector as education does not use for its own management the techniques which it teaches and which have largely been proved in other fields,” the author provides as counterpoint. Since pedagogical needs so closely relate to the more pragmatic needs of the industry in general, these elements should seek to compliment and engage each other, in fact, collaboration is imperative, Dr. Chopard expresses a priori. “The cooperation of future employers is indispensable in the preparation of the product, so that it is capable of providing the expected services. The need for close relations between training establishments and the hotel and catering industry seems obvious,” Dr. Chopard says. The author reveals some flaws in hospitality marketing strategy, and then contrasts these against how a successful strategy could/should be implemented.

Waking the sleeping giant: Beliefs of Brazilian and *American teachers concerning liberation curriculum

The school curriculum is a matter mandated by the educational system rather than determined by the school stakeholders of a community, as Freire (1993) suggests. At the present time, one significant vision of school is challenging the current order of curriculum practice. It focuses on school as a liberating agency grounded on the belief that the abilities to access information and to think critically about it will educate an individual capable of making independent decisions. This dissertation investigates teacher's beliefs concerning curriculum. It was assumed that there is a discrepancy between what has been the position proposed by critical theorists including Freire (1998a, 1993); Apple (1979); Giroux (1998), and the position on curriculum which school systems are typically advancing. ^ There were four purposes of this study. The major purpose of this study was to determine whether or not Brazilian and American Teachers believe that a school curriculum based on Freirean principles could be implemented in the schools in which they worked. Also, this study sought to determine the differences found between teachers' beliefs in the Brazilian and American contexts. Another purpose was to determine how Brazilian and American teachers justify their beliefs and actions when these may represent conflicting values. Finally, this study sought to determine if these teachers believe that the curriculum is in need of change or if they accept the current curriculum as adequate. This study consisted of quantitative and qualitative data collection through multiple methods involving surveys and interviews. The study involved 171 teachers (88 Brazilian and 83 American) from multiple settings with the majority working for public systems. Overall, it seems that Brazilian and American teachers believe that a curriculum based on Freirean principles of education can be implemented in their schools, if ongoing education is provided. The majority of Brazilian teachers believe a curriculum change is necessary while half of the American teachers believe a curriculum change is needed and the other half seems to believe curriculum is adequate. Teachers explain that it is hard to implement a curriculum they believe to be most appropriate for students because the current curriculum is mandated by the school system or by national guidelines. The majority of Brazilian teachers and those American teachers who believed a curriculum change is necessary explained their rationale for change in terms of social justice, problem-solving, collective work, student-centered and context-based curriculum. American teachers, who believed that the curriculum is adequate, explained that they are satisfied with their student's achievements. They stated that their students are doing well on tests and are learning what is required. ^

Decision-making under extreme *uncertainty: Rethinking hazard -related perceptions and action

Understanding who evacuates and who does not has been one of the cornerstones of research on the pre-impact phase of both natural and technological hazards. Its history is rich in descriptive illustrations focusing on lists of characteristics of those who flee to safety. Early models of evacuation focused almost exclusively on the relationship between whether warnings were heard and ultimately believed and evacuation behavior. How people came to believe these warnings and even how they interpreted the warnings were not incorporated. In fact, the individual seemed almost removed from the picture with analysis focusing exclusively on external measures. ^ This study built and tested a more comprehensive model of evacuation that centers on the decision-making process, rather than decision outcomes. The model focused on three important factors that alter and shape the evacuation decision-making landscape. These factors are: individual level indicators which exist independently of the hazard itself and act as cultural lenses through which information is heard, processed and interpreted; hazard specific variables that directly relate to the specific hazard threat; and risk perception. The ultimate goal is to determine what factors influence the evacuation decision-making process. Using data collected for 1998's Hurricane Georges, logistic regression models were used to evaluate how well the three main factors help our understanding of how individuals come to their decisions to either flee to safety during a hurricane or remain in their homes. ^ The results of the logistic regression were significant emphasizing that the three broad types of factors tested in the model influence the decision making process. Conclusions drawn from the data analysis focus on how decision-making frames are different for those who can be designated “evacuators” and for those in evacuation zones. ^

Frugivory and Seed Dispersal by Crocodilians: An Overlooked Form of Saurochory?

Saurochory (seed dispersal by reptiles) among crocodilians has largely been ignored, probably because these reptiles are generally assumed to be obligate carnivores incapable of digesting vegetable proteins and polysaccharides. Herein we review the literature on crocodilian diet, foraging ecology, digestive physiology and movement patterns, and provide additional empirical data from recent dietary studies of Alligator mississippiensis. We found evidence of frugivory in 13 of 18 (72.2%) species for which dietary information was available, indicating this behavior is widespread among the Crocodylia. Thirty-four families and 46 genera of plants were consumed by crocodilians. Fruit types consumed by crocodilians varied widely; over half (52.1%) were fleshy fruits. Some fruits are consumed as gastroliths or ingested incidental to prey capture; however, there is little doubt that on occasion, fruit is deliberately consumed, often in large quantities. Sensory cues involved in crocodilian frugivory are poorly understood, although airborne and waterborne cues as well as surface disturbances seem important. Crocodilians likely accrue nutritional benefits from frugivory and there are no a priori reasons to assume otherwise. Ingested seeds are regurgitated, retained in the stomach for indefinite and often lengthy periods, or passed through the digestive tract and excreted in feces. Chemical and mechanical scarification of seeds probably occurs in the stomach, but what effects these processes have on seed viability remain unknown. Because crocodilians have large territories and undertake lengthy movements, seeds are likely transported well beyond the parent plant before being voided. Little is known about the ultimate fate of seeds ingested by crocodilians; however, deposition sites could prove suitable for seed germination. Although there is no evidence for a crocodilian-specific dispersal syndrome similar to that described for other reptiles, our review strongly suggests that crocodilians function as effective agents of seed dispersal. Crocodilian saurochory offers a fertile ground for future research.

Israel, You Rascals

Mark Steel started doing stand-up in 1982 in England, around the circuit of bizarre gigs, going on after jugglers and escapologists and people that banged nails into their ear. Then came the Comedy Store and Jongleurs and getting bottled off at The Tunnel, and then a regular slot on Radio 4′s Loose Ends, where he met Joseph Heller, Christopher Lee and Gary Glitter. He did 4 series of ‘The Mark Steel Solution’, one for Radio 5 and the others on Radio 4, and a radio series about cricket, which provoked a whole page of fury in the Daily Express. He presented three series of a sports programme called ‘Extra Time’ which he was very proud of, especially as it went out on Tuesday nights on Radio 5 to possibly no listeners whatsoever. Then there was four series of the lectures on Radio 4, a book called ‘It’s Not a Runner Bean’, another one called ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’, and 3 television series of the lectures on BBC 4 and BBC 2. He has done weekly columns in Socialist Worker, the Guardian and the Independent. He has written a book called ‘Vive le Revolution’, and has been on various panel shows like Have I Got News For You and QI, and on Room 101, and on Question Time he says that he “got very confused when I insulted a member of the Tory shadow cabinet, and afterwards he said I was splendid and invited me for a drink.” And he’s spoken at lots of demonstrations and union meetings and protests, and appeared at quite a few benefits. This essay originally appeared on his website: http://marksteelinfo.com/blog/.