The impact of retrieval processes, age, general achievement level, and test scoring scheme for children's metacognitive monitoring and controlling

This multi-phase study examined the influence of retrieval processes on children’s metacognitive processes in relation to and in interaction with achievement level and age. First, N = 150 9/10- and 11/12-year old high and low achievers watched an educational film and predicted their test performance. Children then solved a cloze test regarding the film content including answerable and unanswerable items and gave confidence judgments to every answer. Finally, children withdrew answers that they believed to be incorrect. All children showed adequate metacognitive processes before and during test taking with 11/12- year-olds outperforming 9/10-year-olds when considering characteristics of on-going retrieval processes. As to the influence of achievement level, high compared to low achievers proved to be more accurate in their metacognitive monitoring and controlling. Results suggest that both cognitive resources (operationalized through achievement level) and mnemonic experience (assessed through age) fuel metacognitive development. Nevertheless, when facing higher demands regarding retrieval processes, experience seems to play the more important role.

Precipitation isoscape of high reliefs: interpolation scheme designed and tested for monthly resolved precipitation oxygen isotope records of an Alpine domain

Stable oxygen isotope composition of atmospheric precipitation (δ18Op) was scrutinized from 39 stations distributed over Switzerland and its border zone. Monthly amount-weighted δ18Op values averaged over the 1995–2000 period showed the expected strong linear altitude dependence (−0.15 to −0.22‰ per 100 m) only during the summer season (May–September). Steeper gradients (~ −0.56 to −0.60‰ per 100 m) were observed for winter months over a low elevation belt, while hardly any altitudinal difference was seen for high elevation stations. This dichotomous pattern could be explained by the characteristically shallower vertical atmospheric mixing height during winter season and provides empirical evidence for recently simulated effects of stratified atmospheric flow on orographic precipitation isotopic ratios. This helps explain "anomalous" deflected altitudinal water isotope profiles reported from many other high relief regions. Grids and isotope distribution maps of the monthly δ18Op have been calculated over the study region for 1995–1996. The adopted interpolation method took into account both the variable mixing heights and the seasonal difference in the isotopic lapse rate and combined them with residual kriging. The presented data set allows a point estimation of δ18Op with monthly resolution. According to the test calculations executed on subsets, this biannual data set can be extended back to 1992 with maintained fidelity and, with a reduced station subset, even back to 1983 at the expense of faded reliability of the derived δ18Op estimates, mainly in the eastern part of Switzerland. Before 1983, reliable results can only be expected for the Swiss Plateau since important stations representing eastern and south-western Switzerland were not yet in operation.

A serial scheme for minimizing the duration of resource-constrained projects within Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project is one of the most-widely used software packages for project management. For the scheduling of resource-constrained projects, the package applies a priority-based procedure using a specific schedule-generation scheme. This procedure performs relatively poorly when compared against other software packages or state-of-the-art methods for resource-constrained project scheduling. In Microsoft Project 2010, it is possible to work with schedules that are infeasible with respect to the precedence or the resource constraints. We propose a novel schedule-generation scheme that makes use of this possibility. Under this scheme, the project tasks are scheduled sequentially while taking into account all temporal and resource constraints that a user can define within Microsoft Project. The scheme can be implemented as a priority-rule based heuristic procedure. Our computational results for two real-world construction projects indicate that this procedure outperforms the built-in procedure of Microsoft Project

Discourse-level Annotation over Europarl for Machine Translation: Connectives and Pronouns

This paper describes methods and results for the annotation of two discourse-level phenomena, connectives and pronouns, over a multilingual parallel corpus. Excerpts from Europarl in English and French have been annotated with disambiguation information for connectives and pronouns, for about 3600 tokens. This data is then used in several ways: for cross-linguistic studies, for training automatic disambiguation software, and ultimately for training and testing discourse-aware statistical machine translation systems. The paper presents the annotation procedures and their results in detail, and overviews the first systems trained on the annotated resources and their use for machine translation.

Der Entwicklungsplan (Development Scheme) für Palästina

Arthur Ruppin

A MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM AND EVALUATION SCHEME FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS

Early Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) had their origin in humanitarian motives, and there was little concern for their cost/benefit ratios; however, as some programs began accumulating data and analyzing it over time, even with single variables such as absenteeism, it became apparent that the humanitarian reasons for a program could be reinforced by cost savings particularly when the existence of the program was subject to justification.^ Today there is general agreement that cost/benefit analyses of EAPs are desirable, but the specific models for such analyses, particularly those making use of sophisticated but simple computer based data management systems, are few.^ The purpose of this research and development project was to develop a method, a design, and a prototype for gathering managing and presenting information about EAPS. This scheme provides information retrieval and analyses relevant to such aspects of EAP operations as: (1) EAP personnel activities, (2) Supervisory training effectiveness, (3) Client population demographics, (4) Assessment and Referral Effectiveness, (5) Treatment network efficacy, (6) Economic worth of the EAP.^ This scheme has been implemented and made operational at The University of Texas Employee Assistance Programs for more than three years.^ Application of the scheme in the various programs has defined certain variables which remained necessary in all programs. Depending on the degree of aggressiveness for data acquisition maintained by program personnel, other program specific variables are also defined. ^

Butadiene via the Huckel Scheme (using Maple)

The Huckel Molecular Orbtial method is used to treat the MO's of butadiene. The method employs analytical tools and Maple.

The ManTIS Field Spectro-Goniometer Movie - Presentation of the Instrument and Measurement Scheme

This article presents and technically describes a new field spectro-goniometer system for the ground-based characterization of the surface reflectance anisotropy under natural illumination conditions developed at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI). The spectro-goniometer consists of a Manual Transportable Instrument platform for ground-based Spectro-directional observations (ManTIS), and a hyperspectral sensor system. The presented measurement strategy shows that the AWI ManTIS field spectro-goniometer can deliver high quality hemispherical conical reflectance factor (HCRF) measurements with a pointing accuracy of ±6 cm within the constant observation center. The sampling of a ManTIS hemisphere (up to 30° viewing zenith, 360° viewing azimuth) needs approx. 18 min. The developed data processing chain in combination with the software used for the semi-automatic control provides a reliable method to reduce temporal effects during the measurements. The presented visualization and analysis approaches of the HCRF data of an Arctic low growing vegetation showcase prove the high quality of spectro-goniometer measurements. The patented low-cost and lightweight ManTIS instrument platform can be customized for various research needs and is available for purchase.

Investigation of cell fate decision in Schizosaccharomyces pombe by ncRNA annotation and statistical analyses

Studies in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe (S. pombe) have done much to inform the view of heterochromatin and its control by the RNA interference (RNAi) machinery. Using cDNA synthesised from poly(A)-enriched RNA samples, numerous novel ncRNA loci were discovered, and the 50 and 30 ends of many other genes were refined in previous studies. Although some of these transcripts may encode novel proteins the function of the majority is yet to be determined. The authors have used strand-specific deep sequencing of RNA, irrespective of poly(A) status, to reveal a highly structured antisense programme that modulates gene expression to dictate cell fate decisions during sexual differentiation. They show that an extensive and elaborate array of ncRNA production accompanies sexual differentiation in the fission yeast S. pombe. Experimental manipulation suggests that these transcripts specifically regulate the function of the target genes.