'What are we doing when we read?' - adult literacy learners' perceptions of reading

This article presents the results of a qualitative study into how adult literacy learners perceive reading. Individual interviews and focus groups were used to ask thirty-seven adult literacy learners at a London further education college what reading is. It follows a grounded theory approach to build a model, or narrative, of reading in the form of six interrelating aspects and seven findings for discussion. These findings include insights on metalanguage and phonic decoding, the distinction between how we read and how we learn to read, motivation and learning to read, the place of reading aloud, the manifold relationship between reading and time, reading as a social practice and reading as a distinctly asocial practice. Implications for the learning and teaching of adult emergent reading are presented for each finding

Built environment education and research in West Africa

Built environment programmes in West African universities; and research contributions from West Africa in six leading international journals and proceedings of the WABER conference are explored. At least 20 universities in the region offer degree programmes in Architecture (86% out of 23 universities); Building (57%); Civil Engineering (67%); Estate Management (52%); Quantity Surveying (52%); Surveying and Geoinformatics (55%); Urban and Regional Planning (67%). The lecturer-student ratio on programmes is around 1:25 compared to the 1:10 benchmark for excellence. Academics who teach on the programmes are clearly research active with some having published papers in leading international journals. There is, however, plenty of scope for improvement particularly at the highest international level. Out of more than 5000 papers published in six leading international peer-reviewed journals since each of them was established, only 23 of the papers have come from West Africa. The 23 papers are published by 28 academics based in 13 universities. Although some academics may publish their work in the plethora of journals that have proliferated in recent years, new generation researchers are encouraged to publish in more established journals. The analyses of 187 publications in the WABER conference proceedings revealed 18 research-active universities. Factors like quality of teaching, research and lecturer-student ratio, etc count in the ranking of universities. The findings lay bare some of the areas that should be addressed to improve the landscape of higher education in West Africa

Avoiding Rotated Bitboards with Direct Lookup

This paper describes an approach for obtaining direct access to the attacked squares of sliding pieces without resorting to rotated bitboards. The technique involves creating four hash tables using the built in hash arrays from an interpreted, high level language. The rank, file, and diagonal occupancy are first isolated by masking the desired portion of the board. The attacked squares are then directly retrieved from the hash tables. Maintaining incrementally updated rotated bitboards becomes unnecessary as does all the updating, mapping and shifting required to access the attacked squares. Finally, rotated bitboard move generation speed is compared with that of the direct hash table lookup method.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, 4 listings; replaced test positions, fixed typo

Estimation of the density of regression errors

Estimation of the density of regression errors is a fundamental issue in regression analysis and it is typically explored via a parametric approach. This article uses a nonparametric approach with the mean integrated squared error (MISE) criterion. It solves a long-standing problem, formulated two decades ago by Mark Pinsker, about estimation of a nonparametric error density in a nonparametric regression setting with the accuracy of an oracle that knows the underlying regression errors. The solution implies that, under a mild assumption on the differentiability of the design density and regression function, the MISE of a data-driven error density estimator attains minimax rates and sharp constants known for the case of directly observed regression errors. The result holds for error densities with finite and infinite supports. Some extensions of this result for more general heteroscedastic models with possibly dependent errors and predictors are also obtained; in the latter case the marginal error density is estimated. In all considered cases a blockwise-shrinking Efromovich--Pinsker density estimate, based on plugged-in residuals, is used. The obtained results imply a theoretical justification of a customary practice in applied regression analysis to consider residuals as proxies for underlying regression errors. Numerical and real examples are presented and discussed, and the S-PLUS software is available.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009053605000000435 in the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Policies to Reduce Lead Exposure: Lessons from Buffalo and Rochester

Lead exposure remains a major issue in cities, such as Buffalo and Rochester, with concentrated, segregated poverty and old, deteriorated housing stock. Exploring and comparing local policies and programs in these two cities, the author suggests that increasing the number of proactive housing inspections in high-risk areas and forming a single-purpose non-profit group dedicated to lead education and advocacy are two valuable interventions. He recommends additional policy steps, such as more stringent inspection standards; state adoption of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Renovation and Repair Program; the lowering of state elevated blood level thresholds; a focus on in-person, interactive education by community health workers; and more vigorous enforcement of testing requirements among physicians

Subprime Lending: the Rotten Core of the Current Economic Crisis

Subprime lending has triggered a global financial crisis, but it remains misunderstood. Here are some basic facts, culled from an upcoming report on abandoned housing by the Partnership for the Public Good. Subprime loans are high cost loans, ostensibly designed for people with less than “prime” credit. In reality, mortgage brokers and lenders often succeed in selling subprime loans to people with good credit. According to the Wall Street Journal, by 2006, fully 61% of subprime loans were going to people who qualified for conventional loans