eGovernment in Victoria ‐ evolution of a resource centre

In 1995 the Victorian Government set an ambitious target to have all suitable government services online by the end of 2001. A knowledge management process was put in place to share government online learnings as they evolved. One of the outputs of this knowledge management process was the Government Online Resource Centre ‐ a web based repository made available to the Victorian Public Sector on the Victorian Government Intranet. This resource was subsequently published on the Internet in December 2000. In March 2002, the Victorian Government launched ‘Putting People at the Centre’ ‐ the Victorian Government's eGovernment vision. The Resource Centre was relaunched as the eGovernment Resource Centre. Governments and organisations worldwide are now actively seeking out this website to promote their eGovernment programmes.     

Distributing prejudice unequally: Do Whites direct their prejudice toward strongly identified minorities?

Across 6 studies, Whites expressed more negative attitudes toward strongly identified racial minorities than toward weakly identified minorities. Whites who personally endorsed worldviews that legitimize the status hierarchy were particularly likely to express negative attitudes toward strongly identified minorities relative to weakly identified minorities, whereas Whites who personally rejected status-legitimizing worldviews displayed the opposite pattern. In addition, Whites' biases against strongly identified minorities dissipated when strongly identified minorities expressed strong endorsement of status-legitimizing worldviews. These studies suggest that Whites do not distribute their prejudicial attitudes equally among all members of minority groups and that some subsets of minorities (the strongly identified) might bear the brunt of racial prejudice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phenolics of Vaccinium berries and other fruit crops

The concentrations and profiles of phenolics of selected fruit crops common in the Western diet, including several Vaccinium species, were examined to better understand how these crops may be useful sources of phenolic phytochemicals. Vaccinium fruit had a high phenolic concentration compared to non‐Vaccinium fruit. Some Vaccinium fruit were particularly rich in certain phenolic subgroups, especially anthocyanins and pro‐anthocyanidins. Among the pro‐anthocyanidin oligomers measured using fluorometric and mass spectroscopic detection, the trimers and tetramers were most abundant, while pro‐anthocyanidins with a degree of polymerization greater than 8 were least abundant. As biomedical studies determine which phenolic structures are associated with particular bioactivities, information on the phenolic concentration and profile of selected species will be useful in developing specific uses for fruit crops in human health. Methods were compared to assess the usefulness of simpler versus more sophisticated means of phenolic analysis. The phenolic components of fruit extracts were purified approximately 20‐fold, and not qualitatively altered, by C18 solid‐phase extraction. However, fruit extracts obtained from C18 solid‐phase extraction differed in their relative abundance of phenolic components. Colorimetric and HPLC‐DAD measures of phenolic concentration were correlated (R² = 0.79), as was pro‐anthocyanidin concentration detected fluorometrically and by mass spectrometry (R² = 0.44). Copyright © 2007 Crown in the right of Canada and Society of Chemical Industry     

Making LibGuides Work: Student Interviews and Usability Tests

This article discusses student use of and feedback on LibGuides in an academic library. The authors conducted interviews and usability tests with on-campus and distance students to determine their preferences and expectations, as well as to identify specific pain points. Based on the findings, the authors changed LibGuides best practices at their institution and overhauled the LibGuides index page.     

Increased liking for a solution is not necessary for the attenuation of neophobia in rats.

Recent evidence suggests that liking and wanting of food rewards can be experimentally dissociated (e.g., Berridge, 1996); this dissociation extends to attenuated neophobia in the present study. Rats tend to eat less of a novel food than a familiar food, a phenomenon called neophobia. The present experiments evaluated whether attenuation of neophobia by prior exposure reflects enhanced liking of the flavor using the Taste Reactivity (TR) test. In Experiment 1, rats given five 10-s TR trials with water or various concentrations of saccharin solution (0.1%, 0.2%, 0.5%) did not show a change in the number of hedonic reactions displayed across trials. However, in a subsequent consumption test from a bottle containing 0.25% saccharin solution, rats with no prior saccharin exposure (group water) consumed less than rats with prior saccharin exposure; that is they displayed neophobia. In Experiment 2, whether rats received five 10-s TR trials with water or 0.5% saccharin solution, they did not display a difference in hedonic reactions to 0.25% saccharin solution in two 5-min TR test trials. These results suggest that the attenuation of neophobia is evidenced as an increase in the tendency to approach a bottle containing the flavored solution (wanting), but not as an enhanced liking of that solution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Paying attention to adult learners online: The pedagogy and politics of community

Our article profiles the evolution of a fully online writing course designed for adult learners in our university's Prior Learning Assessment Program. Based on our own observations and experiences teaching adult learners online, we question if the virtual learning environment presents different challenges and prospects for the adult learner versus the traditional student learner, along with an extension and complication of the more social metaphors of “virtual community.” Moreover, because of the changing demographic from traditional to adult students, we argue that this change also fosters a change in the relationship between teachers and students. In chronicling this relationship, we note problems when the labor of adult education becomes invisible to those supervising online instructors. Because of these “invisible” labor issues, we argue that successful online instruction must include a range of interactions between students and instructors that extend the more public concept of community to better acknowledge the importance of personal, private interaction. Thus, we conclude with a call to rethink our online writing pedagogies to be more flexible to adult learner needs and learning styles, simultaneously recognizing the impact of adult online education on faculty workload.