Technological literacy for students aged 6–18: a new method for holistic measuring of knowledge,capabilities, critical thinking and decision-making

Technological literacy is identified as a vital achievement of technology- and engineering-intensive education. It guides the design of technology and technical components of educational systems and defines competitive employment in technological society. Existing methods for measuring technological literacy are incomplete or complicated, unreliable, unstable and imprecise, time-consuming, and require large expenditures on resources. This paper presents a new method for valid and reliable measuring of technological literacy. The method encompasses three main components—knowledge, capabilities, and critical thinking and decision-making. It is centred on the standards for technological literacy issued by the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association. It has three key features. (1) A construct-measure-result front-ended approach, where a construct consists of an object, attribute, and entity; which causes reduction of measure-induced distortion and error. (2) A broad test range definition that provides stable and accurate measuring of technological literacy for 6–18-year-old students. (3) A genuine design approach including a multiple choice test item form determination consisting of content, criterion and construct validity, item discrimination, difficulty index, and an intraclass correlation measure for time stability and scooping its heterogeneous nature. Only the method is described herein and its pilot test results are presented. It is moderately reliable over time (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.68, p < 0.05), has high criterion-related validity (r _xy  < 0.4) and construct validity (h ² > 0.7). High content validity evidence was ensured through a two-stage validation method, while test item discrimination coefficient values are acceptable (r _pbis  > 0.1). The method is time-efficient (measuring lasts 45 min), valid, stable, and enables holistic investigation of large sample sizes.     

精益生产战略对企业转型的启示

在本次金融危机的冲击下,企业的生存环境日渐恶劣。面对客户越来越多的苛刻要求,很多企业感到束手无策。陷入困境的中国企业正面临着转型,精益生产就进入了我们的视线。企业通过实施精益生产,不但可以减少浪费,而且还能够增强企业的价值识别和创新精神,使企业在未来日益激烈的市场竞争中抢得先机,获得竞争优势。     

华商文化传播与中国品牌国际化发展研究

华商文化应是一种弘扬传统华商文化之精髓、吸纳全世界文化之优点、创新、融合、发展中的文化集合体。华商文化应当是中国品牌的灵魂,而中国品牌应当是华商文化的主要载体。在华商文化国际化与中国品牌国际化的进程中,华商文化是神,中国品牌是形,按自然界的规律,只有神形合一,神形相谐,二者才能实现较好的发展,也才能实现最终的中国品牌国际化的目标。     

‘Get out of Traian Square!’: Roma Stigmatization as a Mobilizing Tool for the Far Right in Timişoara,Romania

Post‐communist Central and Eastern Europe has seen far right movements and parties gain considerable ground by drawing on nativist and ethnic claims to call for a return to an imagined past. In Romania, far right groups have been able to capitalize on a sense of injustice while also playing on historically negative feelings towards the Roma community. These patterns have been observed in Timi?oara, where the group Noua Dreapt? (New Right) has established a foothold over the past decade by emphasizing claims that blame the Roma for loss of built heritage and corruption in the administration of property restitution. The aims of this article are to examine the emergence of Noua Dreapt? and its use of Roma stigmatization, and to consider the ways in which extreme views are normalized by appealing to beliefs and perceptions. The findings of the article show that pre‐existing prejudices can be a powerful force that not only targets marginalized communities, but also challenges administrative practices and builds organizational support. At the level of the city, it is possible to identify the way in which these claims can be more precisely calibrated to draw on concerns that circulate within the community.     

A context-based service matching approach towards functional reliability for industrial systems

ABSTRACT

As service-oriented computing is commonly used in industrial systems to deal with the continually changing business environment, matching processes with existing services becomes one of the most important phases in constructing, integrating and optimizing information systems. The precision of semantic service matching becomes a critical factor in ensuring the correctness of functionalities in system processes. However, the dependability of semantic service matching cannot be warranted in complex contexts. To improve semantic service matching for industrial systems, a context-based semantic service matching approach named ‘Process-Based service MatchMaker’(PBMM) is proposed in this paper. It selects the suitable services for the process from candidate services through taking the dependencies of related services process into consideration.     

Heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrix estimators for spatial autoregressive models

In the presence of heteroskedasticity, conventional test statistics based on the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimator lead to incorrect inference results for the linear regression model. Given that heteroskedasticity is common in cross-sectional data, the test statistics based on various forms of heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrices (HCCMs) have been developed in the literature. In contrast to the standard linear regression model, heteroskedasticity is a more serious problem for spatial econometric models, generally causing inconsistent extremum estimators of model coefficients. This paper investigates the finite sample properties of the heteroskedasticity-robust generalized method of moments estimator (RGMME) for a spatial econometric model with an unknown form of heteroskedasticity. In particular, it develops various HCCM-type corrections to improve the finite sample properties of the RGMME and the conventional Wald test. The Monte Carlo results indicate that the HCCM-type corrections can produce more accurate results for inference on model parameters and the impact effects estimates in small samples.     

Inconsistency of the MLE and inference based on weighted LS for LARCH models

This paper considers a class of finite-order autoregressive linear ARCH models. The model captures the leverage effect, allows the volatility to be arbitrarily close to zero and to reach its minimum for non-zero innovations, and is appropriate for long memory modeling when infinite orders are allowed. However, the (quasi-)maximum likelihood estimator is, in general, inconsistent. A self-weighted least-squares estimator is proposed and is shown to be asymptotically normal. A score test for conditional homoscedasticity and diagnostic portmanteau tests are developed. Their performance is illustrated via simulation experiments. It is also investigated whether stock market returns exhibit some of the characteristic features of the linear ARCH model.     

基于企业资源观的我国便利店关键资源识别与培育

企业资源观指出,获取、培育关键资源是企业战略发展的关键,是企业形成可持续竞争优势的基石。本文以其代表人物科利斯和蒙哥马利的成果为理论依据,通过构建资源识别坐标,指出我国便利店企业关键资源所在及培育途径。     

现代农业科技创新及推广机制

利用针对四川省548户农户所做调研的统计数据,分析了我国农户获得农业科技的途径、曾获得的农业科技支持、最希望获得的信息和技术、对各种推广模式的评价等信息。利用加权评分模型总结出优化的现代农业科技创新及推广机制。在总结我国农业科技创新存在问题的基础上,提出对策建议。     

酒店前台管理系统的功能分析和总体设计

本文主要介绍了酒店前台管理系统的功能分析和总体设计部分。