(2010). Spotlight on Speech Codes 2010: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation's Campuses. Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (NJ1) Each year, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) conducts a rigorous survey of restrictions on speech at America's colleges and universities. The survey and resulting report explore the extent to which schools are meeting their legal and moral obligations to uphold students' and faculty members' rights to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and private conscience. This year's report examines the restrictions on speech that are in force at a large sample of American colleges and universities and identifies emergent trends within the data. The report also addresses recent developments regarding free speech in the university setting, drawing from FIRE's research on university policies and from cases that FIRE has handled over the past academic year. Some highlights from this year's research include: (1) New York University prohibits "insulting, teasing, mocking, degrading or ridiculing another person or group"; (2) Keene State College in New Hampshire… [PDF]
(2015). Purposeful Parenthood: Better Planning Benefits New Parents and Their Children. Education Next, v15 n2 p51-55 Spr. The effects on children of the increase in single parents is no longer much debated. They do less well in school, are less likely to graduate, and are more likely to be involved in crime, teen pregnancy, and other behaviors that make it harder to succeed in life. Research at the Brookings Institution shows that social mobility is much higher for the children of continuously married parents than for those who grow up with discontinuously married or never-married parents. What does all of this have to do with education? Rates of unwed childbearing and divorce are much lower among well-educated than among less-educated women. More and better education is one clear path to reducing unwed parenthood and the growth of single-parent families in the future. The better-educated are much more successful at avoiding the arrival of a baby before they are in a committed relationship and ready to be parents. The relationship between education and the ability to plan a family goes in both… [Direct]
(2009). Re-Evaluating Split-Fovea Processing in Word Recognition: A Critical Assessment of Recent Research. Neuropsychologia, v47 n12 p2341-2353 Oct. In recent years, some researchers have proposed that a fundamental component of the word recognition process is that each fovea is divided precisely at its vertical midline and that information either side of this midline projects to different, contralateral hemispheres. Thus, when a word is fixated, all letters to the left of the point of fixation project only to the right hemisphere whereas all letters to the right of the point of fixation project only to the left hemisphere. An informed assessment of research in this area requires an accurate understanding of the nature of the evidence and arguments that have been used to develop this \split-fovea theory\ of word recognition (SFT). The purpose of this article is to facilitate this understanding by assessing recent published support for SFT. In particular, we assess (i) the precision with which experiments have been conducted, (ii) the assumptions made about human visual ability, and (iii) the accuracy with which earlier research… [Direct]
(2009). Anomalous Brain Dominance and the Immune System: Do Left-Handers Have Specific Immunological Patterns?. Brain and Cognition, v69 n1 p188-193 Feb. Geschwind and Behan (1982) and Geschwind and Galaburda (1985a, 1985b, 1985c) suggested a correlation between brain laterality and immune disorders. To test whether this hypothesis holds true not only for the frequency of immune diseases and circulating autoantibodies, but extends also to cellular immunity, we examined the association between handedness and markers of cellular immunity. Twenty-seven left-handed and 37 right-handed subjects were serologically screened for cellular parameters and 22 left-handed subjects were typed for human leukocyte antigen (HLA). When compared to the right-handers, the left-handed group showed a significant decrease in the inflammatory cell types CD3[superscript +] T cells (total T cells), CD4[superscript +] T cells (T-helper cells), and HLA-Dr (MHC-II, antigen-presenting cells) as well as in the CD19[superscript +] cells (B cells) and CD16/CD57[superscript +] cells (natural killer cells). We assume a relationship exists between cerebral hemispheric… [Direct]
(2012). Credible Immigration Policy Reform: A Response to Briggs. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, v31 n4 p963-966 Fall. The authors agree with Vernon M. Briggs, Jr., that U.S. immigration policy has had unexpected consequences. The 1965 immigration reforms led to unanticipated chain migration from developing countries whereas the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act failed to slow unauthorized immigration. The result is a large foreign-born population with relatively low levels of human capital. The authors disagree with him, however, on the labor market effects of this migration stream and on his proposed policy reforms. Briggs suggests that immigration policy has the power to solve society's most vexing problems. By simply reducing legal immigration by 30 percent and eliminating illegal immigration, the United States can reverse the long-term decline in blue-collar wages, reduce unemployment, and lower poverty and income inequality. The authors think immigration policy has important economic effects and needs to be overhauled, but immigration policy reform is not a silver bullet. Briggs… [Direct]
(2009). The Role of Hand Dominance in Beginning Braille Readers. Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, v103 n10 p705-708 Oct. In this article, the author examines the role of \hand dominance\ in beginning braille readers. \Hand dominance\ refers to whether an individual is \right handed\ or \left handed.\ The data for these analyses were taken from the Alphabetic Braille and Contracted Braille Study (ABC Braille Study). The ABC Braille Study was a five-year nonrandomized longitudinal study that was conducted with approval of the Human Subjects Institutional Review Board at Vanderbilt University and those of other researchers' universities. The analyses in this article used data from 35 students in a range of educational placements. The analyses examined two major variables: (1) hand dominance; and (2) reading patterns. Data on hand dominance were based on reports by the teachers of students with visual impairments at the beginning of the study. Hand movement patterns for reading were derived through observation. Through visual and statistical analysis, no statistically significant correlations were found… [Direct]
(2012). The Morehouse Mystique: Becoming a Doctor at the Nation's Newest African American Medical School. Johns Hopkins University Press The Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, is one of only four predominantly Black medical schools in the United States. Among its illustrious alumni are surgeons general of the United States, medical school presidents, and numerous other highly regarded medical professionals. This book tells the engrossing history of this venerable institution. The school was founded just after the civil rights era, when major barriers prevented minorities from receiving adequate health care and Black students were underrepresented in predominantly White medical schools. The Morehouse School of Medicine was conceived to address both problems–it was a minority-serving institution educating doctors who would practice in underserved communities. The school's history involves political maneuvering, skilled leadership, dedication to training African American physicians, and a mission of primary care in disadvantaged communities. Highlighting such influential leaders as former Health and Human… [Direct]
(2010). Beyond Peace Education: Toward Co-Poiesis and Enduring Improvisation. Policy Futures in Education, v8 n3-4 p315-339. Is it possible that the essence of peace is negated in peace education? And is it possible that even against its own will peace education calls for the negation of its negation? In peace education no serious attempts have been made to elaborate its most central concepts. \Pacifism\, \violence\, \counter-violence\ and \emancipation\, \culture of peace\, among others, have still not been probed. Peace education, actually, is a serious threat to human edification. Peace for the eternal Jew, for the enduring improviser, is a condition of the one who found his way: an endless path of a nomad that has Love but no other \home\, dogma or quest for \home-returning\ into thingness, the continuum or the Same. He will never find and never search for \peace\ as an end of Diasporic existence and terminality of the suffering of the nomad. He will be at peace with his mission of avoiding history within history, of overcoming the temptation to be part of the collective \I\/consensus/pleasure… [Direct]
(2009). The Role of the Parietal Lobe in Visual Extinction Studied with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, v21 n10 p1946-1955 Oct. Interhemispheric competition between homologous areas in the human brain is believed to be involved in a wide variety of human behaviors from motor activity to visual perception and particularly attention. For example, patients with lesions in the posterior parietal cortex are unable to selectively track objects in the contralesional side of visual space when targets are simultaneously present in the ipsilesional visual field, a form of visual extinction. Visual extinction may arise due to an imbalance in the normal interhemispheric competition. To directly assess the issue of reciprocal inhibition, we used fMRI to localize those brain regions active during attention-based visual tracking and then applied low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation over identified areas in the left and right intraparietal sulcus to asses the behavioral effects on visual tracking. We induced a severe impairment in visual tracking that was selective for conditions of simultaneous… [Direct]
(2008). Quantifying the Efficiency of a Translator: The Effect of Syntactical and Literal Written Translations on Language Comprehension Using the Machine Translation System FALCon. Applied Language Learning, v18 n1-2 p17-25. This study introduces a new method of evaluating human comprehension in the context of machine translation using a language translation program known as the FALCon (Forward Area Language Converter). The participants include 48 freshmen from the United States Military Academy enrolled in the General Psychology course, PL100. Results of this study have brought a few key points for consideration in Arabic machine translation. First, human understanding is not a factor to be ignored in gauging the usefulness of such translators. Secondly, the type of translation used can depend on the type of information needed, whether it is key people and places or the general plans or opinions. An even better method would combine the two types (probably through human interpretation) to have one complete translation with both key details and the right concepts. Combining the strengths of the two types is especially important in developing a training strategy to employ translators like the FALCON for… [Direct]
(2005). Special Education: Children with Autism. Report to the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness, Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives. GAO-05-220. US Government Accountability Office In this report to the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) describes the trend in the number of children diagnosed with autism served under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, the services provided to these children, the estimated per pupil expenditures for educating children with autism, and approaches to their education. GAO provided a draft of this briefing to officials at the Department of Education for their technical review and incorporated their comments in this final report where appropriate…. [PDF]
(2008). Indigenous Knowledge and Intellectual Property Rights: Confronting Modern Norms to Promote Sustainability. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, v2 n4 p276-294 Oct. The global proliferation of intellectual property rights (IPRs), most recently through the World Trade Organization's Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, poses a grave threat for Indigenous knowledge systems. There is an increasing amount of \piracy\ of Indigenous knowledge, whereby corporations and scientists from rich countries are claiming proprietary rights over knowledge that has belonged to cultures and people for hundreds of years. From the hoodia cactus and the Mexican yellow bean, to the use of neem and turmeric in India, IPRs have been inappropriately utilized to promote growth for the rich while hindering development and perpetuating poverty within many Indigenous knowledge-holding communities. The separation of humans from culture, culture from ecology, and ecology from economics has caused severe ecological exploitation and subsequent degradation. This article frames the current debate at the intersection of IPRs and Indigenous… [Direct]
(2011). On the Dangers of Rosy Lenses: Reply to Alba, Kasinitz and Waters. Social Forces, v89 n3 p775-781 Mar. This article responds to the Alba, Kasinitz and Waters' commentary on the authors' article. The authors state that not all kids are doing \all right,\ and the substantial number at risk of social and economic stagnation or downward mobility looms as a significant social problem. They contend it is true that right-wing commentators may pick on these findings for their own purposes, but this is certainly no reason to obscure the facts. Laying a rosy veil over them is a dangerous strategy. The authors go on to explain that a good part of the divergence in this field has to do with an emphasis on different aspects of the process of assimilation. Many scholars privilege a culturalist perspective where the emphasis is on immigrants, and especially their descendants, becoming indistinct from the natives. After they learn unaccented English, give up loyalties and concerns in their old country, and become fully involved in things American, the process is essentially complete. It matters… [Direct]
(1992). Revisiting the Americas: Teaching and Learning the Geography of the Western Hemisphere. Pathways in Geography Series, Title No. 4. This book, issued in observance of the Columbus Quincentennial and on the occasion of the 27th International Geographical Congress, addresses a broad range of contemporary topics including environmental change, dynamics of the world economy, human needs, wants and rights, political order and change, and contemporary cultures. The format is one of essays and complementary learning activities, including one essay and two activities in Spanish. Divided into five sections, section 1, "Environmental Change," contains the following essays: (1) "The Changing Use of Water in the Americas" (Lee); (2) "Streamflow" (Bock); (3) "The Effects of Volcanoes on the Landscapes and Peoples of the Americas" (Romey); (4) "Volcanoes and Human Activities in the Caribbean (Bencloski); (5) "The Global Effect of El Nino" (Caviedes); (6) "Teaching El Nino" (Prorok); (7) "Tropical and Temperate Rainforests" (Hansis); (8) "Humans,… [PDF]
(2009). Cortical Bases of Elementary Deductive Reasoning: Inference, Memory, and Metadeduction. Neuropsychologia, v47 n4 p1107-1116 Mar. Elementary deduction is the ability of unreflectively drawing conclusions from explicit or implicit premises, on the basis of their logical forms. This ability is involved in many aspects of human cognition and interactions. To date, limited evidence exists on its cortical bases. We propose a model of elementary deduction in which logical inferences, memory, and meta-logical control are separable subcomponents. We explore deficits in patients with left, medial and right frontal lesions, by both studying patients' deductive abilities and providing measures of their meta-logical sensitivity for proof difficulty. We show that lesions to left lateral and medial frontal cortex impair abilities at solving elementary deductive problems, but not so lesions to right frontal cortex. Furthermore, we show that memory deficits differentially affect patients according to the locus of the lesion. Left lateral patients with working memory deficits had defective deductive abilities, but not so left… [Direct]