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When students or recent graduates come to talk with Anthony M. Sozzo, an associate dean for student affairs at New York Medical College, about repaying their federal loans, he sometimes struggles with what to tell them. He states that the answers are increasingly being complicated by an ever-expanding federal loan-servicing system. The number of entities that service the loans owned by the federal government has risen sharply over the past several years, from one company in 2008 to 13 as of this month. Keeping up with the increase in servicers has been a challenge, financial-aid officers say, and at the individual-borrower level the changes are causing confusion over what borrowers are expected to pay and where they should go to manage their loans. With 13 companies now handling federal direct loans and more to come, aid administrators predict that the resulting inconsistencies will overwhelm borrowers.

Limiting access to some methods of suicide, a strategy known as means restriction, is gaining support among mental-health researchers. Some suicides can be prevented, the logic goes, if it is more challenging for an impulsive individual to harm himself. But on most campuses, that strategy has not taken hold. Instead, counseling and education tend to be the centerpiece of suicide-prevention efforts. Only at a few institutions, mainly where students' suicides have made headlines in recent years--like Cornell, New York University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology--have administrators acted, beyond locking doors to roofs, to significantly alter physical elements of the campus in the name of prevention. Limiting access to common means of suicide has proven, under some circumstances, successful. In the past few decades, mental-health experts have come to consider "means restriction" an important prevention strategy.

OMICS Publishing Group is an open-access publisher operating under an author-pays model. Unlike traditional journal subscriptions in which readers or institutions pay to read content, OMICS relies on its contributors for financial support. Although the author-pays model is not a new phenomenon in the realm of open access, its recent popularity has attracted some companies that try to exploit it. Some legitimate, peer-reviewed journals support themselves on the author-pays model, but other journals using the model are essentially vanity publishers that accept virtually any article to collect fees from the authors. The distinction between those two extremes, though, is not always clear-cut. OMICS insists that it falls squarely into the legitimate camp. With more than 12,000 Facebook fans, 200 journals, about 20,000 editorial board members, and dozens of conferences each year, the company says it is positioning itself to become a leader in open-access scholarship. But numerous authors, faculty members, and open-access advocates have raised concerns about the practices of OMICS and the quality of its journals. In some cases, faculty members say they were named to editorial boards without their consent and cannot get OMICS to remove their names. Some authors allege that despite the company's claims, their articles were not peer reviewed and have even contained mistakes that should have been corrected in previous drafts. Others say the company's fees, which can be as high as several thousand dollars, are excessive and are not transparent. Journals like those run by OMICS often appeal to prospective contributors in part because of their quick turnaround time; it usually takes just several weeks to have an article reviewed, accepted, and published. For graduate students and junior faculty members under pressure to publish, a company's promise of such a short review process can be an attractive prospect. By contrast, the review process at established print journals can last for months.

Energized by his fellow adjunct professors who had gathered for a national meeting last month in Washington, District of Columbia, Joshua A. Boldt flew home to Athens, Georgia, opened his laptop, and created a Google document. On his personal blog, the writing instructor implored colleagues to contribute to the publicly editable spreadsheet, detailing their pay per course and other working conditions, noting their institutions and departments. The goal of the crowdsourcing project was to praise universities that treat adjunct professors well and "out" those institutions that do not. "Let's combine forces," he wrote. And did they ever. In the first week after Mr. Boldt began what he has come to call the Adjunct Project, he says he spent hours watching the information flood in to his Google document and just trying to keep the data properly formatted. At any given time, there were between 30 and 40 people entering information into the spreadsheet in real time, he says. Mr. Boldt has since formalized the data-input process and moved the project onto its own dedicated site. Mr. Boldt attributes the popularity of his project to the need for a space for adjuncts to discuss the issues they face. He also says that people are attracted to the interactive, communal nature of crowdsourcing information that they care about.

Surface lithic scatters are relatively common in arid environments worldwide and attest to human occupation and use of desert environmental resources over long (104–106-year) time scales. A recent paper by Hardaker (2020) describes Early to Middle Stone Age lithic scatters in desert environments in Namibia, and deduces their spatial patterns and the relative age of individual lithic artifacts. Here, we challenge the results of Hardaker's study based on (1) the methodology that was employed to map the scatters and analyse lithic age, and (2) the spatial interpretation applied to the lithic scatters and the derived ages of individual artifacts. This re-evaluation of Hardaker's study provides a better conceptual basis for documenting and interpreting lithic scatters worldwide, which should apply established geoarchaeological methods and be set in the context of desert geomorphological processes and environments during the Quaternary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

FRP materials, though having been around for several decades, are seeing increasing uptake in the structural engineering domain. In New Zealand, the use of FRP sheets is especially common in the seismic retrofit of buildings and bridges, though there is still minimal use of FRP bars as internal reinforcement. A number of typical uses of FRP materials are shown, highlighting the different solutions offered by the material as well as the developing familiarity of engineers and contractors of the material. Then, the direction of research into the use of FRP is touched on, showcasing the progress made in understanding FRP-reinforced and retrofitted structures and what could be next in terms of potential applications of the material. The applications discussed showcase that versatility of the material allows it to be used in a variety of areas in construction, provided more standardised manufacturing techniques are developed and key research questions on their behaviour are answered. Overall, there is a growing awareness of the properties of FRP as a structural material within the construction industry and there is ongoing research to further investigate where and how it can be used in concrete structures in pursuit of improved durability, performance and resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates the maintenance of attention in classroom settings in three groups of children: (1) normal; (2) Down Syndrome; and (3) non-Down Syndrome mentally handicapped. Tasks involving visual and auditory distraction were used, and results were compared with teacher ratings of distractability. (Author/RH)

The results of the experiment demonstrated that Down's syndrome children are equal to non-disabled children matched on mental age, in their ability to discriminate between colors. Both Down's syndrome and non-disabled children made errors of the same kind. Other undifferentiated mentally handicapped children are less consistent in their color discrimination behavior. (Author/CL)

The article describes how a British residential school for hearing-impaired children tackled difficult behavior and became more conscious of its ethos by employing a problem-centered methodology. Problems such as intra-school communication and students' inappropriate social behavior were the focus of a teacher workshop and resultant task groups. (Author/JDD)

Development of cognitive processes and visual perception in 128 Down Syndrome (DS) children (ages 5 to 18) was compared to that of 162 nonhandicapped children (ages 3 to 8). Linear, rather than stepwise, relationships between performance and chronological age in the DS subjects and similar to normal visual perceptual development were found. (Author/DB)

Presents the results of a study which examined the attitudes of 46 experienced teachers toward a blind Cantonese speaking interviewer. Experimental group teachers (n=23) were led to believe the interviewer was blind. Results showed that the blind interviewer was perceived more positively than the sighted individual. (JDH)

This annotated bibliography describes international documents comprising a basic reference shelf of materials published by the United Nations system. Included are materials about the United Nations as a whole, its regional economic commissions, and the various autonomous organizations having agreements with the United Nations. (EM)

Studies the development of early drawing in 129 Chinese children aged 7 to 12 and 118 English children aged 7 to 11. Results indicate that similarities are more apparent than differences in children's drawings. (RJC)

Discusses the development of an activity program for physically disabled children. Notes that physical state of the children and the content of activities should be considered when designing strategies for physical development. Appropriate activities are suggested for a number of disabilities. Criteria for an exemplary program are set forth. (KO)

Supports the hypothesized distinction between Mongol children's visual-motor performance and their correctly perceiving visual designs. (Author/RL)

Among the findings were that there was no significant difference in performance between Down's syndrome, other mentally handicapped, and normal Ss matched for mental age, when extraneous developmental factors were eliminated; and that there was no relationship between mental age and visual perception in any group. (DLS)

The results supported the hypothesis that mentally handicapped children have a significant attraction to symmetrical arrangement, and that Down's syndrome children are more significantly attracted than other retarded children. (Author/DLS)

There was some evidence to support the suggestion that certain types of mentally handicapped children attend to singe cues rather than to total configuration. There was also evidence of perceptual distortion resulting in reversal and attraction to "good form." (Author)

The paper reviews contributions of J. Piaget and others to the understanding of perception's importance in the cognitive development of mentally retarded children. The effects of poor discrimination learning on IQ scores are noted. (CL)

Subjects were tested (118 Down's Syndrome; 108 other mentally handicapped; 123 normal) in a simple discrimination task. Both handicapped groups tended to succeed in matching one card only, in position. The normal group tended to succeed with the full array. Down's Syndrome children tended to adopt a response bias. (Author)

* BACKGROUND: Clinical interpretation of patient-reported outcome measures is an essential step in patient-centered care. Interpretation of scores derived from the Neck Functional Status Computerized Adaptive Test (NFS-CAT) has not been studied. * OBJECTIVES: To (1) assess the reliability of point estimates and improvement scores, (2) determine thresholds of minimal clinically important improvement (MCII), and (3) develop a functional staging model to facilitate clinical interpretation of NFS-CAT scores. * METHODS: A secondary retrospective cohort analysis was performed using data from patients aged 14 to 89 years who started an episode of care for neck impairments during 2016-2017 and completed the NFS-CAT at admission. The reliability of point estimates and of improvement scores was derived from the NFS-CAT standard error of measurement. The MCII was estimated by combining distribution- and anchor-based approaches. A functional staging model was developed to describe clinical meaningfulness of the quantitative scores provided by the NFS-CAT. * RESULTS: Of 250 741 patients who completed the NFS-CAT at admission (mean ± SD age, 54 ± 16 years; 65% female), 169039 (67%) also completed the NFS-CAT at discharge. The standard error of measurement was stable across the measurement continuum, ranging from 3.7 to 3.9 NFS-CAT points. Minimal detectable improvement was 6.8 points at the 90% confidence level. The estimate of the MCII was 8.1 points, with more change points needed to achieve the MCII for patients with lower baseline scores. Large rates of functional staging change during treatment were observed, demonstrating responsiveness of the functional staging model. * CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated how the NFS-CAT can be interpreted to better assist clinicians and patients with neck [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]