CA : A Cancer Journal for Clinicians

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa University of Chicago Press, 2011 This book has much to say that is perceptive about today's undergraduate higher education in the United States. It will be valuable to review the authors' insights. At the same time, it will be as instructive to note the book's weaknesses, and especially what is omitted from the discussion. It is a discussion that is truncated intellectually by the authors' close adherence to the selective awareness that so greatly typifies the mindscape of the contemporary American "establishment" in academia and throughout the commanding heights of American society. That mindscape allows a recognition of many things, but not of others. The authors are both faculty members at major American universities. Richard Arum is a sociology professor at New York University with a tie to the university's school of education. He is the author of several books on education and director of the Education Research Program sponsored by the Social Science Research Council. His co-author, Josipa Roksa, is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. That the book is published by the University of Chicago Press attests to its presumptive merit. Academically Adrift furnishes an example of something that has long been common in social science writing: a rather thin empirical study serving as the work's own contribution, combined with considerable additional material coming out of the literature on whatever subject is being explored. The function of the authors' own research is thus often to serve more or less as scientistic windowdressing. The reason we say the empiricism for this book is "thin" is that the "longitudinal data of 2,322 students," while seemingly ample, involves students spread over "a diverse range of campuses," including "liberal arts colleges and large research institutions, as well as a number of historically black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions," all "dispersed nationally across all four regions of the country." This must necessarily mean that the "sample" from any given institution or program was quite small. We are told that the authors didn't concern themselves with the appropriateness of each sample, but left the recruitment and retention of the sample's students to each of the respective institutions. The authors acknowledge that the study included fewer men than women, and more good students than those of "lower scholastic ability." So far as this book is concerned, however, the thinness doesn't particularly hurt the content, since so much of what is said doesn't especially depend upon anything unique found by the authors' own research. A brief summary is provided when the authors say that "we will highlight four core 'important lessons' from our research." These are that the institutions and students are "academically adrift" (which is the basis for the book's title), that students gain surprisingly little from their college experience, that there is "persistent and growing inequality" in the students' learning, and that "there is notable variation both within and across institutions" so far as "measurable differences in students' educational experiences" is concerned. Following the lead of former president Derek Bok of Harvard and of the Council for Aid to Education, the authors' ideal for higher education is that it will enhance students' "capacity for critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing." These are the three ingredients measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), which the authors value most among the various assessment tools. The CLA results, they say, show that "growing numbers of students are sent to college at increasingly higher costs, but for a large proportion of them the gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning and written communication are either exceedingly small or empirically nonexistent. …

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses

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Fuzzy Multiple Attribute Decision Making Methods And Applications

Предлагается практическая модель для диагностики организаций. Модель относительно проста в применении. В течение нескольких лет автор экспериментировал с когнитивными картами организаций - некими маркерами, с помощью которых описывал наблюдения и трактовал взаимоотношения между различными единицами информации. Большинство теорий организации, по мнению автора, либо слишком узки, чтобы охватить действительность, либо слишком широки и абстрактны, чтобы эффективно направлять поиски. В своей модели М. Вайсборд выделяет в организации шесть блоков организационных переменных: цели, структуру, вознаграждения, вспомогательные механизмы, взаимоотношения и лидерство. Их он изобразил в виде ячеек в круге (как на экране радара). Точно так же как авиадиспетчеры используют радар для определения курса самолета в зависимости от высоты, скорости, дистанции и погоды, те, кто работает над совершенствованием организации, должны наблюдать за взаимоотношениями между всеми элементами, а не концентрировать внимание на одном из них. Для каждого блока необходимо диагностировать как формальную, так и неформальную системы организации. Формальная система отвечает на вопрос как это должно быть, а неформальная показывает сам процесс работы. Для каждого из блоков автор разработал ключевые диагностические вопросы. Цели. Предложены два фактора: ясность целей организации и согласие (и поддержка) относительно целей организации. Структура. Ставятся следующие вопросы: есть ли адекватность между организационной целью и структурой, построенной, чтобы обслуживать эту цель. Существуют три варианта построения организационных структур: по функциям (специалисты одного профиля работают вместе), по продуктам, программам или проектам (команды, состоящие из специалистов разного профиля, работают на конечный результат), и соединение первого и второго подходов (матричная структура). Взаимоотношения. Задаются вопросы: кто и с кем должен работать; какие технологии должны использоваться (в рамках формальной системы); и как хорошо они это делают; каково качество отношений, методы управления конфликтами (в рамках неформальной системы). Поощрения. Три важных вопроса, на которые следует ответить: Определены ли задачи, решение которых нужно стимулировать? Что конкретно поощряется материально и психологически (формально)? Что по ощущению людей поощряется и наказывается (неформальная система поощрений и наказаний)? Лидерство. Надо определить степень, с которой лидеры: определяют цели; воплощают цели в программы; сохраняют целостность организации; поддерживают порядок (управляют конфликтами). Полезные механизмы. Это процедуры, технологии, совещания, системы планирования, контроля, бюджет, отчеты, информация и т.д. Качество работы этих механизмов легко проследить, следуя за основным технологическим процессом и определяя узкие места. Ключевым аспектом организационного диагноза является наличие и величина разрыва (расхождения) между формальной и неформальной структурами организации по каждому из выделенных параметров (опеределение соответствия индивида и организации). Другим вопросом является величина несоответствия между тем что есть и что должно быть (определение соответствия между организацией и внешним окружением). Диагностическую модель Вайсборда рекомендуется использовать при дефиците времени, в организациях с несложной структурой. (С.А. Липатов)

Organizational diagnosis: Six places to look for trouble with or without a theory / Диагностика организации: шесть областей для поиска проблем на теоретической основе или без нее

The application of plant growth regulators to improve phytoremediation of contaminated soils: A review.

Ground roll, which is characterized by low frequency and high amplitude, is an old seismic data processing problem in land-based seismic acquisition. Common techniques for ground roll attenuation are frequency filtering, f-k or velocity filtering and a type of f-k filtering based on the time-offset windowed Fourier transform. These techniques assume that the seismic signal is stationary. In this study we utilized the S, x-f-k and t-f-k transforms as alternative methods to the Fourier transform. The S transform is a type of time-frequency transform that provides frequency-dependent resolution while maintaining a direct relationship with the Fourier spectrum. Application of a filter based on the S transform to land seismic shot records attenuates ground roll in a time-frequency domain. The t-f-k and x-f-k transforms are approaches to localize the apparent velocity panel of a seismic record in time and offset domains, respectively. These transforms provide a convenient way to define offset or time-varying reject zones on the separate f-k panel at different offsets or times.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1365-2478.2007.00659.x

Ground roll attenuation using the S and x‐f‐k transforms

Stress Sensitivity of Fractured and Vuggy Carbonate: An X-Ray Computed Tomography Analysis

Kinetics of biogas production and chemical oxygen demand removal from compost leachate in an anaerobic migrating blanket reactor.

Wavenumber, group velocity, phase velocity, and frequency-dependent attenuation characterize the propagation of surface waves in dispersive, attenuating media. We use a mathematical model based on the generalized S transform to simultaneously estimate these characteristic parameters for later use in joint inversion for near-surface shear wave velocity. We use a scaling factor in the generalized S transform to enable the application of the method in a highly dispersive medium. We introduce a cost function in the S-domain to estimate an optimum value for the scaling factor. We also use the cost function to generalize the application of the method for noisy data, especially data with a low signal-to-noise ratio at low frequencies. In that case, the estimated wavenumber is perturbed. As a solution, we estimate wavenumber perturbation by minimizing the cost function, using Simulated Annealing. We use synthetic and real data to show the efficiency of the method for the estimation of the propagation parameters o...

Dispersion and the dissipative characteristics of surface waves in the generalized S-transform domain

Pore scale modeling method has been widely used in the petrophysical studies to estimate macroscopic properties (e.g. porosity, permeability, and electrical resistivity) of porous media with respect to their micro structures. Although there is a sumptuous literature about the application of the method to study flow in porous media, there are fewer studies regarding its application to thermal conduction characterization, and the estimation of effective thermal conductivity, which is a salient parameter in many engineering surveys (e.g. geothermal resources and heavy oil recovery). By considering thermal contact resistance, we demonstrate the robustness of the method for predicting the effective thermal conductivity. According to our results obtained from Utah oil sand samples simulations, the simulation of thermal contact resistance is pivotal to grant reliable estimates of effective thermal conductivity. Our estimated effective thermal conductivities exhibit a better compatibility with the experimental data in companion with some famous experimental and analytical equations for the calculation of the effective thermal conductivity. In addition, we reconstruct a porous medium for an Alberta oil sand sample. By increasing roughness, we observe the effect of thermal contact resistance in the decrease of the effective thermal conductivity. However, the roughness effect becomes more noticeable when there is a higher thermal conductivity of solid to fluid ratio. Moreover, by considering the thermal resistance in porous media with different grains sizes, we find that the effective thermal conductivity augments with increased grain size. Our observation is in a reasonable accordance with experimental results. This demonstrates the usefulness of our modeling approach for further computational studies of heat transfer in porous media.

Roohollah Askari

Papers

Ground roll attenuation using the S and x‐f‐k transforms

Stress Sensitivity of Fractured and Vuggy Carbonate: An X-Ray Computed Tomography Analysis

Kinetics of biogas production and chemical oxygen demand removal from compost leachate in an anaerobic migrating blanket reactor.

Dispersion and the dissipative characteristics of surface waves in the generalized S-transform domain

Thermal conductivity of granular porous media: A pore scale modeling approach