Personality traits,preferences and educational choices: A focus on STEM

Around the developed world, the need for graduates from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields is growing. Research on educational and occupational choice has traditionally focused on the cognitive skills of prospective students, and on how these determine the expected costs and benefits of study programs. Little work exists that analyzes the role of personality traits on study choice. This study investigates how personality traits relate to preferences of students for STEM studies and occupations, and to specialization choice in high school. We use a rich data set that combines administrative and survey data of Dutch secondary education students. We find that personality traits are related to both the preference that students have for STEM as the actual decision to specialize in STEM studies, but to different degrees. We identify significant relations with preference indicators for all Big Five traits, especially for Openness to Experience (positive), Extraversion and Agreeableness (both negative). The size of these relations is often larger than those between cognitive skills and STEM preferences. Personality traits are comparatively less important with respect to the actual specialization choice, for which we identify a robust (and sizable) negative relation with Extraversion, and for girls find a positive relation with Openness to Experience. The results suggest that once students have to make actual study choice decisions, they rely more on cognitive skills rather than personality traits, in contrast to their expressed preferences.     

1980年以来西北回族教育史研究述评

本文对近20年来西北回族教育史的研究现状和成果进行归纳梳理,目的在于从史学的角度来审视西北回族教育的发展历程,从而为西北回族社会史的研究提供一个新的视角。     

Group living decisions as youths transition to adulthood

This study follows teens through young adulthood as they transition to independent living. We focus on a little studied issue: why some youths live in groups rather than alone or with parents. This choice is important because the size of the group has a substantial impact on the demand for dwelling units; the more youths per dwelling the lower is aggregate demand and the greater is population density. Our study also adds to the knowledge of which factors influence youths' choice of destination as they leave the parental home. The empirical testing uses a discrete hazard model within a multinomial logit framework to allow for more than one possible state transition. We find that economic variables have little impact on the decision of whether to exit to a large versus a small group, while socio-demographic variables matter. We also test a new push-pull hypothesis and find that the pull of economic variables on the probability of exiting the parental home increases as youths reach their mid to late twenties. Received: 15 July 1999/Accepted: 15 May 2000     

福建省高新技术企业研发成本收益效率比较研究*

以国际金融危机暴发以来福建省部分高新技术企业的研发成本收益数据作为原始数据,运用数据包络分析方法,比较分析了福州、厦门、莆田、三明等9个设区市高新技术企业的研发成本收益效率及其变化情况,并结合成本收益综合效率测度结果,提出了提升福建省高新技术企业研发成本收益的相关建议。     

Finely Resolved On‐Road PM2.5 and Estimated Premature Mortality in Central North Carolina

To quantify the on‐road PM_2.5‐related premature mortality at a national scale, previous approaches to estimate concentrations at a 12‐km × 12‐km or larger grid cell resolution may not fully characterize concentration hotspots that occur near roadways and thus the areas of highest risk. Spatially resolved concentration estimates from on‐road emissions to capture these hotspots may improve characterization of the associated risk, but are rarely used for estimating premature mortality. In this study, we compared the on‐road PM_2.5‐related premature mortality in central North Carolina with two different concentration estimation approaches—(i) using the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model to model concentration at a coarser resolution of a 36‐km × 36‐km grid resolution, and (ii) using a hybrid of a Gaussian dispersion model, CMAQ, and a space–time interpolation technique to provide annual average PM_2.5 concentrations at a Census‐block level (～105,000 Census blocks). The hybrid modeling approach estimated 24% more on‐road PM_2.5‐related premature mortality than CMAQ. The major difference is from the primary on‐road PM_2.5 where the hybrid approach estimated 2.5 times more primary on‐road PM_2.5‐related premature mortality than CMAQ due to predicted exposure hotspots near roadways that coincide with high population areas. The results show that 72% of primary on‐road PM_2.5 premature mortality occurs within 1,000 m from roadways where 50% of the total population resides, highlighting the importance to characterize near‐road primary PM_2.5 and suggesting that previous studies may have underestimated premature mortality due to PM_2.5 from traffic‐related emissions.     

Reproducible Risk Assessment

Reproducible research is a concept that has emerged in data and computationally intensive sciences in which the code used to conduct all analyses, including generation of publication quality figures, is directly available, and preferably in open source manner. This perspective outlines the processes and attributes, and illustrates the execution of reproducible research via a simple exposure assessment of air pollutants in metropolitan Philadelphia.     

《石头记》己卯本、庚辰本研究综述——20世纪《红楼梦》版本研究综述之二

20世纪《红楼梦》版本研究的重大突破表现在对己卯本、庚辰本的研究上,既找到了己卯本的藏抄主人是怡亲王弘晓,又找到庚辰本同己卯本的血缘关系。己卯本是同曹家有着两代交往的怡亲王弘晓的家藏本,其底本可能来自曹雪芹或者脂砚斋的家藏本。庚辰本与己卯本有着一个共同的祖本,这就使保存完整而又最近真的庚辰本成为一个最重要的本子。     

从忠实的镜像到超真实的幻像--20世纪模仿理论的演变

“模仿”是西方美学和文论中最为重要的范畴之一。评述20世纪阐释学、结构主义和后现代思潮对模仿的重新理解,并指出:在从艺术领域向哲学领域的扩展中,模仿经历了从忠实的镜像到超真实的幻像的演变过程,在丧失作为艺术本质的传统权威地位的同时,它作为消解“在场”形而上学和自我指涉之符号的自由游戏,又获得新的意义和价值。