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To date, very little research on L2 peer review of L2 essay composition has focused on the issue of whether the choice of L1 or L2 use in the peer review process facilitates or hinders students' transmission and reception of productive commentary on their essay drafts. This study was designed to ascertain the impact of language choice in written peer review sessions on both the types of commentary made and essay authors' propensity to incorporate peer commentary into subsequent drafts. Data was collected from essay assignments in an English writing course at an English-medium university in Japan using written peer reviews conducted in both Japanese and English in a cross-balanced design. The data were analyzed to measure the impact of the language used on the number and types of comments made, as well as to ascertain the relative impact of peer commentary on the subsequent revisions. The study found sizeable differences according to the language a peer review was conducted in, suggesting that L2 written peer reviews may be more beneficial at identifying/rectifying paragraph-level and structural issues, whereas L1 peer review was slightly better for correcting rhetorical and logical issues.

Aim: Patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) may be vulnerable to changes in healthcare management, safety standards and protocols that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials & methods: The REthink Access to Care & Treatment (REACT) survey assessed USA-based patient perspectives on COVID-19-related impacts to their MBC treatment experience between 27 April 2021 and 17 August 2021. Results: Participants (n = 341; 98.5% females, mean age 50.8 years) reported that overall oncology treatment quality was maintained during the pandemic. Delayed/canceled diagnostic imaging was reported by 44.9% of participants while telemedicine uptake was high among participants (80%). Conclusion: Overall, MBC care was minimally affected by the pandemic, possibly due to the expanded use of telemedicine, informing MBC management for future public health emergencies. Plain Language Summary The COVID-19 pandemic has forced healthcare providers to change the way that healthcare is delivered. These changes could particularly affect people with metastatic breast cancer (MBC), an advanced stage of cancer that has spread to other parts of the body. The authors of this study used a web-based survey to ask 341 volunteers with MBC how the pandemic has affected their cancer treatment. The authors found that people with MBC thought that the quality of their care stayed the same during the pandemic. Most people (80%) surveyed were able to use telemedicine, the remote delivery of care by phone or computer, to replace in-person visits to their doctor. However, almost half of people surveyed reported delays or cancellation of their diagnostic imaging appointments. Overall, this study shows that the COVID-19 pandemic did not affect peoples' opinions of their MBC care. Increased use of telemedicine may have contributed to the lack of disruption in care. These findings will help guide MBC care during future public health emergencies. Tweetable abstract A survey of patient perspectives on their care for metastatic breast cancer during the COVID-19 pandemic has shown consistent quality of care. Care delivery adaptations such as telemedicine may be key to maintaining cancer care quality during future public health emergencies. Substantial changes in healthcare management, safety standards and protocols occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) are particularly at risk of pandemic-related negative consequences due to the need for clinical visits, multimodal therapies, potential immunosuppression and compromised support services. This cross-sectional study used a two-part REthink Access to Care & Treatment (REACT) survey to assess the perspective of patients with MBC on the effects of COVID-19 with regards to their MBC treatment experience. Data from 341 validated participants (98.5% females; mean age 50.8 years) revealed that patient-reported overall quality of oncology treatment remained about the same during the pandemic. Telemedicine uptake was high among participants (80%); replacement of in-person visits with telemedicine was the most reported change to regular clinical checkups and mental health visits due to the pandemic. However, 44.9% of participants reported that diagnostic imaging appointments were either delayed or canceled. During the pandemic, 48.1% of participants reported disease progression. Overall, participants perceived that the management and treatment of their MBC were minimally disrupted by the pandemic, likely due in part to the utilization of telemedicine. While these findings can inform MBC management decisions during future public health crises, future studies should solicit perceptions of care from more diverse patient populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vocabulary learning is a process requiring the connection of mental concepts to new word-labels. The Revised Hierarchical Model claims that beginning learners recognize the meaning of L2 words via a process of translation, needing considerable time and effort to forge direct connections between L2 words and mental concepts. However, might young children, as they are still rapidly acquiring L1 vocabulary, be able to bypass the L2-to-L1 translation required by adult L2 learners, and instead link new L2 words directly to pre-existing mental concepts? This study tested over 1,000 4th-6th graders in Japanese elementary schools on their ability to match newly learned L2 words with corresponding pictures or L1 translations. The results demonstrate that students connect L2 vocabulary to pictures more quickly, and this effect becomes more robust when students are taught via pictures, which suggests that young learners are indeed capable of accessing concepts without translating from their L1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effects of semantic and phonetic radicals on Chinese character decoding by high-intermediate level Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners. The results of the study suggest that the CFL learners tested have a well-developed semantic pathway to recognition; however, their phonological pathway is not yet a reliable means of character identification. Semantic radicals that correctly pertain to character meaning facilitated reaction time in semantic categorization tasks, while radicals that had no immediately interpretable relation to character meaning had a strong inhibitory effect. The relative accuracy of phonetic radicals (for predicting the whole-character's pronunciation) did not measurably improve homonym recognition. In a lexical decision task (Experiment 3), the subjects were significantly slower in identifying pseudo-characters when the phonological component was blurred, indicating that, despite having unreliable phonological pathways to character recognition, the subjects were still using phonological radical analysis as their default recognition strategy; however, the author argues that the radical is likely being used for orthographic disambiguation more than for phonological properties.

The effects of semantic and phonetic radicals on Chinese character decoding were examined. Our results suggest that semantic and phonetic radicals are each available for access when a corresponding task emphasizes one or the other kind of radical. But in a more neutral lexical recognition task, the semantic radical is more informative. Semantic radicals that correctly pertain to character meaning facilitated reaction time in semantic categorization tasks (Experiment #1), while radicals that had no immediately interpretable relation to character meaning had a strong inhibitory effect. Likewise, phonetic radicals that accurately indicated a character's pronunciation facilitated a homonym recognition task (Experiment #2), whereas phonetic radicals that differed significantly in pronunciation from their character inhibited homonym recognition. In a lexical decision task (Experiment #3) where each character had either a blurred semantic radical or a blurred phonetic radical, the characters with a blurred semantic radical elicited a significantly higher error rate and a trend for longer response times. These results are interpreted to indicate that while educated native Chinese speakers have full use of both semantic and phonetic paths to character decoding, there is a slight predisposition to semantic decoding strategies over phonetic ones indicating that the semantic path is the default means of character recognition.

A Hunter College librarian, with public library experience, offered a series of drop-in workshops Saturday afternoons open to all students and questions regarding Web or Windows use in the academic year, 2000-2001. The intention of the workshops was to address the continuous needs of students lacking technological and informational literacy. The success of these workshops led to this investigation of the implications of 21st century technology on non-traditional students from the perspective of bibliographic instruction as well as reference desk service. The perspective is that of the urban educational environment of City University of New York and Hunter College. The histories of open admissions at CUNY and the current efforts to abolish remediation are examined.

Research in information systems (IS) has been dominated by an epistemic script that leads to a variety of negative consequences related to the novelty, creativity, and nature of theory produced. While having matured as a field, theory and theorising in IS tend to lack diversity, struggle in balancing the role of reference theory and empirics, inadequately internalise the information technology (IT) artefact into theories developed, and lack clear relationships to what practitioners actually experience. Our premise is that critical realism (CR), based on specific ontological and epistemological foundations, affords the potential to establish alternative epistemic scripts that can enhance the theory product in IS research. We discuss the basic concepts of theory and theorising and relate these to the current state of theory developed in IS research. Next, we review the fundamental principles of CR and describe how a research script based on this philosophy of science addresses the negative consequences posed by the current dominant script. Lastly, we demonstrate the potential value of CR in terms of generating novel and substantive theory as manifest in two examples of published research that adopt the CR script. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information security is often viewed as a technological matter. However, security professionals will readily admit that without safe practices by users, no amount or type of technology will be effective at preventing unauthorized intrusions. By paralleling the practices of information security and health prevention, a rationale for employing constructs from existing models of health behavior is established. A comprehensive and parsimonious model (the Security Belief Model) is developed to explain information security behavior intentions. The model is tested empirically based on a sample of 237 Indian professionals. The results of the empirical study indicate general support for the model, particularly including severity, susceptibility, benefits, and a cue to action as antecedents to the intention to perform preventive information security behaviors. The paper also discusses implications of the model and results for practitioners and possibilities for future research are included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-satisfaction, defined in this study as overall satisfaction with an e-vendor's website, is considered an important factor in encouraging loyalty to that site. Yet, to date, findings have varied tremendously, in both the strength of the satisfaction-loyalty relationship and factors surrounding it. We approach the study of e-satisfaction and e-loyalty (here termed “site stickiness”) from a site-specific perspective, meaning that we focus on consumer perceptions of satisfaction with, and loyalty toward, the information technology (IT) artifact (website) itself, excluding outside influences, such as offline interactions with the e-vendor and postconsumption experiences. We further seek to understand the satisfaction-stickiness relationship in the context of the hospitality industry, where loyalty programs are believed to play a key role in impacting consumer behavior. We ground our research model in Bagozzi's 1992 framework of the self-regulation of attitudes, intentions, and behavior, and test it using a survey of 4838 consumers who visited a large hotel chain's website for the specific purpose of researching room rates and availability as a prelude to booking a room. Results generally support the proposed model. Post hoc analyses indicate that while trust is not a significant direct predictor of satisfaction, it negatively moderates the value-satisfaction relationship. Loyalty card membership, while an important predictor of site stickiness, does not moderate the satisfaction-stickiness relationship as suggested in prior research. This indicates further research is necessary to explore other ways of conceptualizing the impact of loyalty programs, such as investigating member vestedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This article seeks to provide an overview of the development, construction and evaluation of an information literacy testing instrument connected with the VOILA! online information literacy tutorials, developed by librarians at Hunter College libraries for students enrolled in the college's first-year orientation seminar (ORSEMs). Design/methodology/approach - The VOILA! online information literacy tutorial, developed by librarians at Hunter College, has a test as one of its components. All incoming students registered in the college's orientation seminars (ORSEMs) are required to go through the VOILA! tutorials and take the test. The longitudinal development and evaluation of the test are reviewed, including initial statement of competencies, test creation, test construction (assessment type, question formulation and question type) and test evolution. Validity and reliability are also discussed in detail. Finally, a review of the test results including general statistics and the connection of student performance to test construction is provided. Findings - Test construction was given a great deal of attention during the development of VOILA!, as librarians wanted an instrument that was valid and reliable. The importance of iterative test design and attention to the details of test construction is stressed in the article, and the methodology used to determine validity and reliability is presented. Those interested in testing information literacy skills must be able to examine the instrument, the results and the design process in a way that contributes meaningfully to the preparation of students to undertake research at the college level. Research limitations/implications - Librarians will continue to modify the VOILA! test in keeping with evaluation results, and the assessment will continue. Thus the results presented may not fully represent the final evaluative outcome. Practical implications - This research is useful for information professionals who are interested in test design, construction and evaluation. The longitudinal study presents clear, practical information that can be used as a case study for other libraries interested in this area. The VOILA! test itself is included as an Appendix, and can be used as a model for other libraries to consult. Originality/value - A literature review revealed a number of articles about testing and information literacy, but very few, if any, articles approached the discussion from a longitudinal test construction standpoint. In this way, the study presents information that is original. The study would be valuable for information professionals who are interested in test design, construction and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though endothelin is recognized as an important vasoregulatory molecule, the roles of endothelin receptors in specific cell types are not yet fully understood. Mice with a null mutation in endothelin A receptor gene (ET[sub A]) or in the gene of its ligand (endothelin 1) die neonatally due to craniofacial and cardiac abnormalities. This early lethality has in the past hindered studies on the role of endothelin in cardiovascular physiology and pathophysiology. To overcome this obstacle, we utilized the cre/loxP technology to generate mice in which the ET[sub A] gene could be deleted specifically in cardiomyocytes. The cre recombinase transgene driven by the α-myosin heavy-chain promoter deleted the floxed ET[sub A] allele specifically in the hearts of these mice, resulting in a 78% reduction in cardiac ET[sub A] mRNA level compared to wild-type controls. Cardiomyocytespecific ET[sub A] knockout animals are viable and exhibit normal growth, cardiac anatomy, and cardiac contractility, as assessed by echocardiography. In addition, these animals exhibit hypertrophic and contractile responses to 10-day infusion of angiotensin II or isoproterenol similar to those observed in control animals. These results indicate that in adult mice cardiac ETA receptors are not necessary for either baseline cardiac function or stress-induced response to angiotensin II or isoproterenol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Sociology professor at Hunter College, in collaboration with a librarian, developed a “packet” that guides the students on how to write a research paper. The librarian and the classroom instructor have worked together for over seven years, and, because of the evolution of this integration, the result is an assignment that adapts very well to change. The assignment was divided between the research process and the writing process, a distinction the classroom teacher made for the students. This article demonstrates which ACRL Information Literacy Standards, Outcomes, and Performance Indicators are implemented by which sections of the packet in an effort to model a research and writing assignment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Software Test Community Leaders (STCL) group is an IBM-wide initiative focused on improving software test and quality practices within the corporation. In 1999, we began working to develop an architecture to integrate both new and existing test tools into solutions for use in the testing organizations across IBM. This paper discusses the requirements for the architecture, as well as the issues associated with developing a solution architecture for a large base of tools that span a variety of platforms and domains. The architecture is being designed and developed to address three concerns for integrating testing tools: integration of the data across tools and repositories, integration of the control across tools, and integration to provide a single graphical user interface into the tool set. Because of the heterogeneous nature of the platforms and domains the architecture must support, extensibility is essential. We address each of these three integration concerns using an open-source framework that operates on a set of standardized but extensible entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A preface to the periodical "IBM Journal of Research and Development" is presented.

Abstract: The peritrophic matrix (PM) in the midgut of insects consists primarily of chitin and proteins and is thought to support digestion and provide protection from abrasive food particles and enteric pathogens. We examined the physiological roles of 11 putative peritrophic matrix protein (PMP) genes of the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum (TcPMPs). TcPMP genes are differentially expressed along the length of the midgut epithelium of feeding larvae. RNAi of individual PMP genes revealed no abnormal developmental phenotypes for 9 of the 11 TcPMPs. However, RNAi for two PMP genes, TcPMP3 and TcPMP5-B, resulted in depletion of the fat body, growth arrest, molting defects and mortality. In situ permeability assays after oral administration of different-sized FITC-dextran beads demonstrated that the exclusion size of the larval peritrophic matrix (PM) decreases progressively from >2 MDa to <4 kDa from the anterior to the most posterior regions of the midgut. In the median midguts of control larvae, 2 MDa dextrans were completely retained within the PM lumen, whereas after RNAi for TcPMP3 and TcPMP5-B, these dextrans penetrated the epithelium of the median midgut, indicating loss of structural integrity and barrier function of the larval PM. In contrast, RNAi for TcPMP5-B, but not RNAi for TcPMP3, resulted in breakdown of impermeability to 4 and 40 kDa dextrans in the PM of the posterior midgut. These results suggest that specific PMPs are involved in the regulation of PM permeability, and that a gradient of barrier function is essential for survival and fat body maintenance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]