Knowing cows: Transformative mobilizations of human and non‐human bodies in an emotionography of the slaughterhouse

This ‘emotionography’ of the slaughterhouse elucidates how the identities of both human and non‐human individuals are constructed by line and lairage workers. Hegemonic masculine ideals that underpin slaughterhouse work mean that the emotions of workers as well as the emotional experience of cattle are either denied, diminished or repressed. Based on fieldwork in an Irish slaughterhouse, I articulate how the industrial slaughter of animals entangles human and non‐human life in metamorphic processes that seek to diminish the emotionality of individuals, maintaining the boundary between human/non‐human animals. These transformations simultaneously pacify the emotional toll of killing non‐human individuals and reinforce perceptions of cows as sellable, killable and edible in the commodification of bovine bodies. Amidst the relative absence of emotions in slaughterhouse ethnographies, this article reveals how emotions emerge, erupt and confound the act of slaughtering cattle for slaughterhouse workers unsettling categorizations of masculinity and ‘animals as food’.     

机械设计制造及其自动化专业人才培养模式的创新实践

在新的历史条件下,深化高等教育改革、提高专业人才培养质量,关键是必须改革和创新专业人才培养模式。围绕专业人才培养目标和基本要求,从制订专业人才培养方案、建立基于课程群的完整的人才培养课程体系、创新人才培养模式等方面,阐述了我校机械设计制造及其自动化专业进行综合改革的具体做法,这对其他高校相关专业的教学改革及人才培养,具有一定的启发。     

高等院校物流管理专业实习实训方案的设计

随着我国社会经济的不断发展,物流领域出现了专业人才匮乏的现象。在社会对物流人才需求旺盛的情况下,很多高等院校相继开设了物流管理专业,以期通过大量培养物流管理专业的人才来满足相关企业的需求。但是在实践中,很多物流管理专业的学生在实习工作中缺少应变能力,实践能力弱,不能达到物流企业的用人标准。对目前高等院校物流管理专业实习实训方案进行了分析探讨,以期设计出一个相对完善、创新的物流管理专业实习实训方案,促进物流管理人才的培养,有效满足当前物流管理人才供不应求的紧张局面,促进我国整个物流领域更好更快地发展。     

Methodological considerations in the use of name generators and interpreters

With data from the Clergy Health Initiative Longitudinal Survey, we look for interviewer effects, differences between web and telephone delivery, and panel conditioning bias in an “important matters” name generator and interpreter, replicated from the U.S. General Social Survey. We find evidence of phone interviewers systematically influencing the number of confidants named, we observe that respondents assigned to the web survey reported a larger number of confidants, and we uncover strong support for panel conditioning. We discuss the possible mechanisms behind these observations and conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of our findings for similar studies.     

Using intervention-oriented evaluation to diagnose and correct students’ persistent climate change misconceptions: A Singapore case study

The evaluation of classroom-based educational interventions is fraught with tensions, the most critical of which is choosing between focusing the inquiry on measuring the effects of treatment or in proximately utilizing the data to improve practice. This paper attempted to achieve both goals through the use of intervention-oriented evaluation of a professional development program intended to diagnose and correct students’ misconceptions of climate change. Data was gathered, monitored and analyzed in three stages of a time-series design: the baseline, treatment and follow-up stages. The evaluation itself was the ‘intervention’ such that the data was allowed to ‘contaminate’ the treatment. This was achieved through giving the teacher unimpeded access to the collected information and to introduce midcourse corrections as she saw fit to her instruction. Results showed a significant development in students’ conceptual understanding only after the teacher's decision to use direct and explicit refutation of misconceptions. Due to the accessibility of feedback, it was possible to locate specifically at which point in the process that the intervention was most effective. The efficacy of the intervention was then measured through comparing the scores across the three research stages. The inclusion of a comparison group to the design is recommended for future studies.     

How to conduct a Narrative Policy Framework study

The Narrative Policy Framework has a growing number of researchers seeking to apply the framework in policy process scholarship. This article is intended to assist those interested in conducting an NPF study that is ‘clear enough to be wrong’ (Sabatier, 2000). While graduate programs offer critical methodological training, this article focuses on the specific application of the NPF to research inquiries about the role of policy narratives in the policy process. We approach our discussion by examining various decisions in the research process and include a detailed discussion of specifying the model and obtaining narrative data. We also point out areas for further investigation.     

The relations between maternal mental state talk and preschoolers’ behavioral adaptation and school readiness: moderation by emotion situation knowledge

This study investigated the extent to which associations between mothers' elaborated talk about mental states and preschoolers’ behavioral adaptation (i.e., social competence and internalizing and externalizing behavior) and school readiness were moderated by emotion situation knowledge. Families (N = 120) were mostly middle‐income and White and 70 of the preschoolers (M = 50.65 months, SD = 6.19) were boys. Results revealed a positive association between elaborated maternal mental state talk and social competence, but only for children average and high in emotion situation knowledge. For children low in emotion situation knowledge, there was a positive association between elaborated maternal mental state talk and internalizing behavior. There also was a negative relation between elaborated maternal mental state talk and school readiness for preschoolers low in emotion situation knowledge. Findings highlight the importance of considering emotion situation knowledge when examining associations between elaborated maternal mental state talk and young children’s social behavioral adaptation and readiness for school.     

Response-adaptive trial designs with accelerated Thompson sampling

In a clinical trial, sometimes it is desirable to allocate as many patients as possible to the best treatment, in particular, when a trial for a rare disease may contain a considerable portion of the whole target population. The Gittins index rule is a powerful tool for sequentially allocating patients to the best treatment based on the responses of patients already treated. However, its application in clinical trials is limited due to technical complexity and lack of randomness. Thompson sampling is an appealing approach, since it makes a compromise between optimal treatment allocation and randomness with some desirable optimal properties in the machine learning context. However, in clinical trial settings, multiple simulation studies have shown disappointing results with Thompson samplers. We consider how to improve short-run performance of Thompson sampling and propose a novel acceleration approach. This approach can also be applied to situations when patients can only be allocated by batch and is very easy to implement without using complex algorithms. A simulation study showed that this approach could improve the performance of Thompson sampling in terms of average total response rate. An application to a redesign of a preference trial to maximize patient's satisfaction is also presented.     

Attitude strength moderates adverse effects to questionnaire design

ABSTRACT

The presentation and visual design of the “don’t know” category in rating scales on respondents’ behavior may have ambivalent effects. The hypothesis is that attitude strength toward the topic influences the respondents’ sensitivity to the graphical design of the scale. A paper-and-pencil questionnaire conducted among 307 German university students contained an experimental variation of the presentation of a “don’t know” category and its visual design. A multinomial logistic regression shows that presenting a “don’t know” category drives respondents toward extreme categories. The visual design of the “don’t know” category influences the distribution of responses, all the more that the respondents’ attitudes toward the item topic are weak.     

技术设计：技术认识的形象化

技术设计是运用设计理论和方法，在创制和改造技术人工物的过程中，把思维中的技术构思规范化、定量化，把它们以标准的图纸或说明书的形式展现出来的创造性活动。技术设计是解决技术问题的关键，通过分析问题、综合取舍、实践评估等环节使得抽象的技术认识得以形象化、具体化，从而形成切实的技术问题解决方案。在不同的认识情形下，技术设计或者被当作一个黑箱，或者被当作一个白箱，或者被当作一个系统，这三种不同的设计方式分别反映出技术设计的创造性、合理性和过程控制。