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High-stakes, standardized tests have become ubiquitous in public education in the United States. Teachers across the country are feeling the intensified pressures from high-stakes testing policies and are responding to these pressures by teaching to the tests in varying ways (Renter et al., 2006). Given the hegemony of high-stakes testing in schools today, this article seeks to explore the question: "W(h)ither the social studies in high-stakes testing?" Drawing on the available body of empirical research, the author argues that social studies teachers are feeling the pressures of high-stakes testing, and that these pressures are causing social studies teachers to alter their classroom practices and curriculum. Further, the author posits that the social studies represent a special case in relation to other subjects because the changes to pedagogy and content are variable, and the amount or significance of these changes depends on specific factors such as test design or whether or not individual sanctions are tied to student performance on the tests. Finally, the author argues that, because of the consistent variability connected to social studies teaching in relation to high-stakes tests, social studies education, in many instances, is positioned to provide an education that challenges the hegemonic norms of high-stakes testing generally as part of a broader need to teach for social justice in today's schools.

The application of the principles of scientific management within the structure, organization, and curriculum of public schools in the US became dominant during the early 1900s. Based upon research evidence from the modern day era of high-stakes testing in US public education, the fundamental logics guiding scientific management have resurfaced 100 years later, as teachers' classroom practises are increasingly standardized by high-stakes testing and scripted curriculum. As such, this paper offers a critical analysis of the changes made to teaching in modern times and argues that public school teachers in the US are teaching under what might be considered the "New Taylorism", where their labour is controlled vis-a-vis high-stakes testing and pre-packaged, corporate curricula aimed specifically at teaching to the tests.

High-stakes, standardized testing has become the central tool for educational reform and regulation in many industrialized nations in the world, and it has been implemented with particular intensity in the United States and the United Kingdom. Drawing on research on high-stakes testing and its effect on classroom practice and pedagogic discourse in the United States, the present paper applies Bernstein's concept of the pedagogic device to explain how high-stakes tests operate as a relay in the reproduction of dominant social relations in education. This analysis finds that high-stakes tests, through the structuring of knowledge, actively select and regulate student identities, and thus contribute to the selection and regulation of students' educational success.

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Abstract: This paper examines the relation between short selling and returns and the impact of arbitrage costs on short sellers’ behavior. Using daily UK short selling data, we find that stocks with low short interest levels experience significant positive returns on both an equal- and value-weighted basis. Economic theory predicts that short sellers avoid establishing positions in stocks with high idiosyncratic risk. Our results indicate a negative relation between short interest and returns among high idiosyncratic risk stocks and that short selling activity is mostly concentrated in low idiosyncratic risk stocks where it is less costly to arbitrage fundamental risk. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We adopt a BEKK-GARCH framework and employ a systematic approach to jointly examine structural breaks in the Hong Kong cash index and index futures volatility and volatility spillovers from the S&P 500 cash and futures. Multiple switching dummy variables are included in the variance equations to test for any structural changes in the autoregressive volatility structure due to the events that have taken place in the Hong Kong market. Abolishment of the up-tick rule, increase of initial margins and electronic trading of the Hang Seng Index Futures (HSIF) are found to have significant impact when US market spillovers are excluded from a restricted model. Volatility spillovers from the US market are found to have a significant impact and account for some mis-specification in the restricted model. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses about the journal "Social Process in Hawaii" that emerges from its period of infancy, having completed five years of existence as a medium for giving wider circulation to some of the local findings in sociology. Throughout its brief history, "Social Process in Hawaii" has sought to maintain an objective, dispassionate attitude toward the problems discussed, although they frequently had a more immediate and personal aspect as well to the students who discussed them. The materials in last year's issue of Social Process in Hawaii were selected to illustrate the process of social disorganization, with the expectation that a subsequent issue would be devoted to social reorganization. Moreover, the scarcity of women and of stable stratified plantation system and its formal restraints and the difficulties of assimilation growing out of their attitudes, contributed further to the social break early years of Japanese residence in Hawaii. The attitudes of the eleven racial groups in Hawaii toward interracial marriage provides a valuable index of cultural conflict and the lack of solidarity within an immigrant community. An article on "The Kahuna and Social Worker" by Charles Kenn, student of Hawaiian culture and a parole officer in Honolulu, continues a discussion in last year's issue on the conflict between American laws and moral standards as interpreted by social workers and certain elements in Hawaiian culture.

The rapidly changing field of gene therapy promises a number of innovative treatments for cancer patients. Advances in genetic modification of cancer and immune cells and the use of oncolytic viruses and bacteria have led to numerous clinical trials for cancer therapy, with several progressing to late-stage product development. At the time of this writing, no gene therapy product has been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Some of the key scientific and regulatory issues include understanding of gene transfer vector biology, safety of vectors in vitro and in animal models, optimum gene transfer, long-term persistence or integration in the host, shedding of a virus and ability to maintain transgene expression in vivo for a desired period of time. Because of the biological complexity of these products, the FDA encourages a flexible, data-driven approach for preclinical safety testing programs. The clinical trial design should be based on the unique features of gene therapy products, and should ensure the safety of enrolled subjects. This article focuses on regulatory considerations for gene therapy product development and also discusses guidance documents that have been published by the FDA.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration applies regulatory flexibility to balance benefits and risks to subjects in cell-therapy clinical trials.