HIV Risk Behavior Self-Report Reliability at Different Recall Periods

Few studies have investigated the optimal length of recall period for self-report of sex and drug-use behaviors. This meta-analysis of 28 studies examined the test-retest reliability of three commonly used recall periods: 1, 3, and 6 months. All three recall periods demonstrated acceptable test-retest reliability, with the exception of recall of needle sharing behaviors and 6-months recall of some sex behaviors. For most sex behaviors, a recall period of 3 months was found to produce the most reliable data; however, 6 months was best for recalling number of sex partners. Overall, shorter periods were found to be more reliable for recall of drug-use behaviors, though the most reliable length of recall period varied for different types of drugs. Implications of the findings and future directions for research are discussed

Comorbid substance abuse and brain morphology in recent-onset psychosis

The aim of the presented study was to compare schizophrenia and schizoaffective patients early in the course of the disease with and without comorbid substance abuse disorder (SUD vs. NSUD) with regard to brain morphology. In a prospective design 41 patients (20 SUD vs. 21 NSUD) diagnosed as recent-onset schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder consecutively admitted to hospital received standardized psychopathological evaluation (BPRS, SANS, MADRS, CGI, GAF) and MRI scanning with volumetric measurement of superior temporal gyrus (STG), amygdala-hippocampal complex, and cingulum. Patients with SUD (primarily cannabis) were significantly younger, predominantly male and had a lower socioeconomic status. Despite less attentional impairment (SANS subscore) and elevated anxiety/depression (BPRS subscore) in patients with SUD compared to NSUD, no other psychopathological differences could be detected. There were no differences in the assessed temporolimbic brain morphology between the two subgroups. In conclusion, in this study substance abuse in recent-onset psychosis had no effect on brain morphology and the earlier onset of psychosis in patients with comorbid SUD could not be explained by supposed accentuated brain abnormalities in temporolimbic regions

Non-affirmative Theory of Education as a Foundation for Curriculum Studies, Didaktik and Educational Leadership

This chapter presents non-affirmative theory of education as the foundation for a new research program in education, allowing us to bridge educational leadership, curriculum studies and Didaktik. We demonstrate the strengths of this framework by analyzing literature from educational leadership and curriculum theory/didaktik. In contrast to both socialization-oriented explanations locating curriculum and leadership within existing society, and transformation-oriented models viewing education as revolutionary or super-ordinate to society, non-affirmative theory explains the relation between education and politics, economy and culture, respectively, as non-hierarchical. Here critical deliberation and discursive practices mediate between politics, culture, economy and education, driven by individual agency in historically developed cultural and societal institutions. While transformative and socialization models typically result in instrumental notions of leadership and teaching, non-affirmative education theory, previously developed within German and Nordic education, instead views leadership and teaching as relational and hermeneutic, drawing on ontological core concepts of modern education: recognition; summoning to self-activity and Bildsamkeit. Understanding educational leadership, school development and teaching then requires a comparative multi-level approach informed by discursive institutionalism and organization theory, in addition to theorizing leadership and teaching as cultural-historical and critical-hermeneutic activity. Globalisation and contemporary challenges to deliberative democracy also call for rethinking modern nation-state based theorizing of education in a cosmopolitan light. Non-affirmative education theory allows us to understand and promote recognition based democratic citizenship (political, economical and cultural) that respects cultural, ethical and epistemological variations in a globopolitan era. We hope an American-European-Asian comparative dialogue is enhanced by theorizing education with a non-affirmative approach

Aligned Scheduling: Cache-efficient Instruction Scheduling for VLIW Processors ⋆

Abstract. The performance of statically scheduled VLIW processors is highly sensitive to the instruction scheduling performed by the compiler. In this work we identify a major deficiency in existing instruction scheduling for VLIW processors. Unlike most dynamically scheduled processors, a VLIW processor with no load-use hardware interlocks will completely stall upon a cache-miss of any of the operations that are scheduled to run in parallel. Other operations in the same or subsequent instruction words must stall. However, if coupled with non-blocking caches, the VLIW processor is capable of simultaneously resolving multiple loads from the same word. Existing instruction scheduling algorithms do not optimize for this VLIW-specific problem. We propose Aligned Scheduling, a novel instruction scheduling algorithm that improves performance of VLIW processors with non-blocking caches by enabling them to better cope with unpredictable cache-memory latencies. Aligned Scheduling exploits the VLIW-specific cache-miss semantics to efficiently align cache misses on the same scheduling cycle, increasing the probability that they get serviced simultaneously. Our evaluation shows that Aligned Scheduling improves the performance of VLIW processors across a range of benchmarks from the Mediabench II and SPEC CINT2000 benchmark suites up to 20%.

“Epistemologische Vielfalt” – Bildungstheoretische Überlegungen

Besonders in den letzten Jahren ist auf die Begriffe der epistemologischen Vielfalt und der unterschiedlichen Epistemologien zunehmend Aufmerksamkeit gelenkt worden. Kritisch betrachtet bedeutet “epistemologische Vielfalt” allerdings weder eine Vielzahl von Wahrheiten noch eine “Alles-ist-erlaubt”-Auffassung von Rechtfertigung und Wissen, sondern die an gewisse soziale und geografische Orte geknüpften unterschiedlichen Erfahrungen, bzw. die verschiedenartigen sozialen Bahnen zum Wissen. In diesem Sinne ist der Verweis auf “Epistemologien”, wie auch auf “pluralische Wissenssysteme” oder subalterne, indigene oder lokale Wissensformen, nicht nur wenig hilfreich, sondern auch irreführend. Das Versprechen einer Sozialepistemologie für das wirkliche Leben hat teilweise mit Kontext und Örtlichkeit zu tun, aber nicht im Sinne einer ausschließenden Nichteinmischungspolitik. Es ist eher anzunehmen und auch vertretbar, dass die besonderen historischen, geografischen und soziokulturellen Erfahrungen von Menschen und Gruppen zu bestimmten Prioritäten führen, die ihre epistemologische Theorie und Praxis gestalten – und dabei erkenntnistheoretische Werkzeuge hervorbringen, welche die Erkenntnistheorie im Ganzen zu bereichern in der Lage sind