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Ongoing curriculum change in higher education is essential to enhance student learning and better prepare them for the job-market. However, research shows that faculty are reluctant to implement such changes because students generally react adversely thereby negating any potential benefits, and moreover, sanction faculty through lower evaluations and future enrollment. Yet, understanding of the effect of curriculum changes on students' course and instructor perceptions is limited. In this article we attempt to fill this gap. Drawing on two empirical findings--students' motivation to attend college becoming increasingly extrinsic since the 1960s and their inability to recognize, "ex ante," the value-added by a curriculum change--and the norm life-cycle theory, we argue that any effort-increasing or grade-threatening change is viewed as non-normative and will lead to an adverse student reaction. However, this adverse reaction will dissipate over time once a critical mass of students is convinced of the merits of the new curriculum. We find support for our hypotheses by analyzing change in student perceptions following curriculum changes at a U.S. University. In addition, we also find that once the adverse reaction dissipates, students' perceptions of the new curriculum become more positive than the old curriculum, only to be reversed once the revised curriculum is accepted as the new norm.

This study examines the experiences of gay-identified college men related to their faith and sexual orientation identity development. The findings suggest that for gay-identified college men, faith and sexual orientation identity development includes examination of one's faith and sexual orientation identity, important relationships, and a desire for service and activism.

The important concepts undergirding school-based management are greater budgetary autonomy, district-level support for local school needs assessments and plans, allowed deviations from district normative expectations, better onsite decision-making opportunities, and a total district commitment to instructional and administrative excellence. In contrast, Chicago's sad situation shows empowerment and citizen control run amok. (MLH)

Reduced insulin sensitivity and glucose intolerance have been long suspected of having important involvement in aging. Here we report that in studies of calorie restriction (CR) effects in mutant ([Propl.sup.df] and growth hormone receptor knockout [GHRKO]) and normal mice, insulin sensitivity was strongly associated with longevity. Of particular interest was enhancement of the already increased insulin sensitivity in CR df/df mice in which longevity was also further extended and the lack of changes in insulin sensitivity in calorically restricted GHRKO mice in which there was no further increase in average life span. We suggest that enhanced insulin sensitivity, in conjunction with reduced insulin levels, may represent an important (although almost certainly not exclusive) mechanism of increased longevity in hypopituitary, growth hormone (GH)-resistant, and calorie-restricted animals. We also report that the effects of GH treatment on insulin sensitivity may be limited to the period of GH administration. Key Words: Insulin--Longevity--GHRKO--Ames dwarf.

In this cross-sectional research design, the authors explore and offer evidence of differential obligations of permanent and contingent workers to their organization. Additionally, they holistically investigate the relationships between different […]

A Method for compensating customer-generators for providing electricity to the grid, is presented.

The reports on changes in greenhouse gas emissions, as reported by different sectors, can sometimes be misleading because apparent reduction in one sector can be lead to an increase in another. Therefore, strategies can be developed, after emissions are applied to the sector responsible for the final energy demand. A study analyzes this aspect by removing the equivalent residential emissions from category A.1.a. (Public Electricity and Heat Production), and applying them to category A.4.b (Residential) in Nova Scotia, Canada.

A generalized strategy is developed to predict the occurrence of a multicategory-multifactorial disease from a set of medical risk factors that are most often used to screen patients for the disease. The prediction problem is formulated as an M-class classification problem. The strategy employs fusion to combine risk factors into a single feature vector, normalization to fuse risk factors which have different formats and ranges, rank-sum ordering for feature selection, discrete Karhunen-Loeve transform-based transformation to facilitate parametric classifier development, and the design of parametric classifiers. Two methods, which differ on how the features are selected, are developed. In the first method, features are selected from a set consisting of linear combinations of all risk factors. In the second method, the features are linear combinations of a preselected subset of the risk factors. The methods are applied to predict the occurrence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) into three classes: Probable-AD, Possible-AD, and Uncertain. It is shown that a classification accuracy of over 71% can be obtained. This result is quite encouraging given that AD is very difficult to clinically diagnose. Higher classification accuracies can be expected for diseases that are not as complex to diagnose as AD. Most importantly, it is concluded that the generalized strategy can not only be applied to the multicategory-multifactorial disease prediction problem but also to other multiclass pattern recognition problems involving diverse information collected from different sources. Index Terms--Alzheimer's disease, feature selection, fusion, multiclass classification, rank ordering.