Education The Oxford Companion to United States History | 2001 | Paul S. Boyer | The Oxford Companion to United States History 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. ( Hide copyright information ) Copyright Education Overview The Public School Movement Collegiate Education The Rise of the University Education in Contemporary America Overview From the founding of Harvard College in 1636 and Massachusetts's public‐school law of 1647 to America's vast and diverse modern‐day educational system, education has been a central thread in the national experience, a focus of reform effort, and a subject of urgent public debate. The founders and early leaders of the new nation viewed an educated electorate as crucial to their republican experiment. As nineteenth‐century municipalities expanded their public‐school systems, religious bodies founded colleges to educate and nurture their young. While some turn‐of‐the‐century reformers looked to the public schools to “Americanize” the immigrant masses, the philosopher John Dewey viewed the schools as incubators of a more just and humane social order. In the same era, research universities arose to promote scientific inquiry, scholarly endeavor, and professional training. In the 1944 Servicemen's Readjustment Act , Congress granted generous educational benefits to returning World War II veterans. When the Russians launched the space satellite Sputnik in 1957, Congress responded with increased funds for education, especially in math and science. When the civil rights movement arose in the 1950s, schools became a prime battleground. Brown v. Board of Education , the Supreme Court 's landmark 1954 civil rights decision, outlawed racial segregation in the public schools. Soon, women and other disadvantaged groups would also demand equal access to educational opportunities. As the twentieth century ended, politicians vied to propose strategies for improving American education. The underlying point is clear: There are few better ways to approach American history as a whole than to examine the nation's centuries‐long effort to educate its citizens. Paul S. Boyer The Public School Movement The people who devised the U.S. Constitution and wrote about the nature of republican government often emphasized the importance of education. However, proposals to create state systems of common schools, such as those put forward by Thomas Jefferson in Virginia and Benjamin Rush in Pennsylvania, did not succeed in the early national period. New state legislatures resisted both governmental innovation and increased taxes. Still, by comparison with other countries, local primary schools were widely available. They were funded locally by a patchwork of tuition payments, property taxes, in‐kind contributions, endowments, and church support. Thus, the rhetoric of republicanism did not translate into a movement to create free public schools. Beginnings of the Public School Movement . By the 1840s conditions were more auspicious for such a reform. Industrialization and urbanization led to visible social problems. The immigration of large numbers of Roman Catholics led native‐born Protestants to worry about how to assimilate newcomers while maintaining the hegemony and institutions they had created. By this time state governments had become more active in shaping institutions and the economy. The Whig party in particular advocated such state activism and thus championed legislation that required towns to provide free education through property taxes. In many states, Whigs also promoted legislation to consolidate small, rural districts into town‐level school systems, and they created state school boards and superintendents to oversee the creation of rudimentary state systems of public schools. Into these superintendencies came some of the famous school reformers, like Horace Mann of Massachusetts, Henry Barnard of Connecticut, and John Pierce of Michigan. They worked to consolidate district schools and promoted longer school terms, normal schools for teacher training, higher school expenditures per pupil, and innovations in curriculum and pedagogy. By 1860 such systems were the general rule in the Northeast and the Middle West , while they failed, after considerable debate, in the South . During the postwar Reconstruction period, southern legislatures created fledgling public school systems, and by the late nineteenth century they were mostly tax‐supported. However, harshly unequal per‐pupil expenditures for segregated black schools forced African Americans to provide supplementary funds from their meager resources. Gilded Age to the 1950s . The public school movement in the nation as a whole went through a period of consolidation in the Gilded Age . The teaching force had become largely female, and normal schools proliferated; a male‐dominated profession of school administration was emerging; city school systems with age‐graded classes became the model; and the public high school surpassed the private academy as the predominant provider of secondary education. Late nineteenth‐century immigration, urbanization, labor strife, and the depression of the 1890s helped launch another period of reform. Like the Antebellum Era , this was a time of accelerated population movement, transformative economic reorganization, and cultural anxiety. In education, this turbulence led to reform proposals that varied greatly in their assumptions and goals. Some, following John Dewey , believed that schools should recognize the individuality of children, appeal to their interests, make learning an active process, and produce citizens who were good critical thinkers. Others, like David Snedden, looked more to teaching of specific content and attitudes, tailoring programs to categories of children and training them for specific roles, depending upon predictions about their likely occupational destinations. These predictions were often made on the basis of family background and, increasingly, standardized tests scores. The Progressive‐Era values of efficiency and scientific measurement prevailed. In school policy the progressive administrators adopted a corporate model of school‐board governance and a hierarchical model for school systems, with a superintendent firmly in charge of all activity. Some of the features of child‐centered progressive education made their way into the public schools. Surviving records suggest increasing concern for the interests of children, widespread use of the project method, and somewhat more active classrooms. As Robert and Helen Lynd said of the schools of Muncie, Indiana, in the 1930s, however, “in the struggle between quantitative administrative efficiency and qualitative educational goals in an era of strain like the present, the big guns” were all on the side of efficiency. ( Middletown in Transition , p.241). By 1940 most children aged five to sixteen were enrolled in school for at least a part of the year; 73 percent of high‐school aged youths were in school. In the hundred years since the beginning of the common school reform movement, the states had created public school systems quite similar from state to state. Local school districts were governed by the states on such matters as the length of the school year, teacher certification, and some basic curriculum requirements. Schools were otherwise governed locally. They were inclusive, with less than 10 percent of school children in private schools. Still, the public schools were often Protestant in outlook and in some of their religious practices, like Bible reading and daily prayers. Furthermore, the public schools were highly segregated by race, either formally or informally, not just in the South and not only for African Americans, but more generally across the nation, with regard to all people of color. Finally, financial resources for public schools varied greatly from state to state and district to district. New Currents of Reform, 1960–2000 . A new phase of public school reform addressed some of these remaining issues. Tackling problems like equity of funding, racial integration, and other group rights was the hallmark of educational reform in the 1960s and 1970s, and it coincided with the expansion of the federal role in education. The Supreme Court 's Brown v. Board of Education (1954), declaring legalized school segregation unconstitutional, laid the groundwork for racial integration, but it gained momentum only when subsequent cases, beginning in the mid‐1960s, defined the demands on local school systems and provided mechanisms for enforcement. Bolstered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the Lyndon B. Johnson administration launched a “War on Poverty,” which attempted to promote equality of opportunity through compensatory education, Head Start for preschool‐aged children, school integration, and job training programs. Court decisions and executive activism led to substantial integration of southern schools, and the legislation that aimed at equalizing opportunity proved popular despite ambiguous evidence of the programs' effectiveness. The quest to secure group rights expanded in the 1970s. Federal legislation defined and made mandatory the recognition of educational rights of women, language minorities, and children with disabilities. The Supreme Court (in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez , 1973) ruled that equalization of resources across districts was not required by the Constitution. However, many states had voluntarily implemented partial equalization formulas, and in the 1980s and 1990s several state supreme courts demanded such equalization, citing specific language regarding equal educational opportunity in their state constitutions. While the ambitious federal agenda eventually encountered a backlash from weary bureaucrats and defenders of various traditions, it also installed a new recognition of diversity in the practices, procedures, and expectations of local school systems, much of it reinforced by new state laws and regulations. Integration efforts also encountered backlash from both whites and blacks, when the negative aspects of busing children were often not matched with improved school achievement by minorities. This disappointment, coupled with the heavy concentration of nonwhite citizens in many large cities, hindered the government's efforts to bring school integration to the North and West. In the face of these obstacles, aggressive, liberal school reform declined. The shift of mood was reflected in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Public school reformers changed their emphasis from equity and inclusion to concerns about the content of the curriculum and the quality of learning across all groups. Reforms were implemented in many states to require more and better coursework from high school students, recruit and train better teachers, and change the structure of school systems to enhance professional control by principals and teachers in local schools. Some educators and parents concluded that it was too little, too late. Disillusionment with the public schools grew. Many people called for school reform outside the structure of the public school system, either through “voucher” payments to private schools or the creation of “charter” schools, variously regulated in different states but everywhere freed from some of the supervision and rules of public systems. The popularity of free‐market models, as well as the growing proportion of the population without school‐aged children, contributed to the sense of crisis. Supporters of public schools worried that the civic and integrative purposes of schools would founder if people abandoned a common, public system. The “public school movement” of the previous century and a half had, in truth, been many movements, many efforts to reform public schools, which had become a focal point for debates about America's values, its children, and its future. The twenty‐first century would face the question of whether there would be a public school system, and, if so, how it would restore public confidence in its ability to provide high‐quality education and assist in the imperative task of unifying a diverse population, those twin mandates established in the 1840s. See also Americanization Movement ; Americans with Disabilities Act ; Civil Rights Legislation ; Civil Rights Movement ; Depressions, Economic ; Education: Collegiate Education ; Education in Contemporary America ; Education: The Rise of the University ; Intelligence, Concepts of ; Poverty ; Protestantism ; Segregation, Racial ; Taxation. Bibliography Lawrence A. Cremin , American Education , 3 vols. 1970–1988. David B. Tyack , The One Best System: A History of Urban Education in America , 1974. Carl Kaestle , Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 , 1983. Diane Ravitch , The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945–1980 , 1983. James D. Anderson , The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 , 1988. Carl F. Kaestle Collegiate Education Since the founding of Harvard College in 1636, American colleges have responded to society's perceived needs. From the late nineteenth century on, American institutions of higher learning have focused on three goals: the transmission of knowledge, especially of Western civilization; the creation of new knowledge in an increasing array of academic disciplines; and the integration of young people into the upper economic and social strata through training and socialization. Young people attended college not just to further their education, but to learn the elite's values and mores and to make the connections considered vital to success. These broad academic and social aims have been met at a variety of diverse institutions, which mirrored American society itself: public and private institutions, small colleges and large universities, rural residential and urban commuter schools, secular and denominational colleges, as well as women's and historically black colleges. In their myriad admissions procedures, faculty recruitment, and curricular approaches, American colleges have expressed America's democratic ideals as well as its overt and subtle patterns of class and racial discrimination. Colonial and Antebellum Era Beginnings . The European university was a model for American higher education, but a distinctive American tradition emerged as early as the eighteenth century. By the time of the Revolutionary War , nine colleges had been established, primarily to provide denominational education for future ministers and upper‐class gentlemen. However, the College of Philadelphia and King's College in New York (later the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, respectively), founded in the 1750s, embraced nonsectarian and utilitarian principles and soon introduced such “practical” subjects as English literature and legal and medical education . In the Antebellum Era , even the most conservative colleges confronted the conflict between classical and contemporary American influences: What role did the past and its tradition of education for the clergy and for “gentlemen” have in a dynamic society bent on progress? What was education's function in a society geared to individual opportunity and mobility ? Balancing meritocratic and democratic values, the traditional curriculum was soon augmented by scientific and other modern studies, though often after considerable internal debate. The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the nation's first technical college, started in 1824. By contrast, the Yale College faculty defended the classical curriculum in an 1828 report. Still, with fewer than one hundred students graduating annually, Yale by 1847 had established a School of Applied Chemistry, soon renamed the Sheffield School after a benefactor, thereby opening the door to instruction in science , modern languages, history, and other popular subjects. Beginning in the Colonial Era , both public and private colleges solicited government support. After the Revolution, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 promoted broad educational opportunity through the allocation of federal land grants to schools and colleges. The Morrill Land Grant Act (1862) and the Hatch Act (1887) stimulated the creation of state land‐grant colleges and universities and other publicly funded agricultural, technical, and teachers' colleges. In the later nineteenth century, the state‐university movement was led by midwestern and western institutions such as the state universities of Michgan, Wisconsin, and California. At the same time, philanthropists such as Leland Stanford and Ezra Cornell founded private colleges and universities where, in Cornell's words, “any person find instruction in any study.” Throughout the 1800s, the United States became a “land of colleges” as religious‐sponsored institutions, from rural Protestant denominational colleges in the Middle West to urban Catholic colleges, were formed to cater to local, first‐generation students. In Indiana, for example, between 1835 and 1844, Presbyterians formed Wabash College, the Methodists started Indiana Asbury (now DePauw University), and the Baptists established Franklin College. Typical of the evolution of Jesuit higher education was the Loyola University of Chicago, which began as St. Ignatius College in 1870. Over time these schools deemphasized the parochial impulses of their founders to satisfy their students' social and professional aspirations. Nevertheless, higher education remained the prerogative of a small minority of the population. In 1915, fewer than one in twenty young people went to college. 1865–1920 . Women's colleges and the historically black colleges, which provided opportunity and training to women and minorities excluded from, or made to feel unwelcome at, private and public colleges and universities, grew rapidly in the Gilded Age . Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley colleges were the first of the so‐called Seven Sisters women's liberal arts colleges. Predominantly white benevolent societies and missionary bodies, black religious organizations, and wealthy individuals and corporate philanthropic foundations started and maintained private black liberal arts colleges, such as Fisk and Howard universities, to prepare an educated leadership class as well as to enable individual students to move into the mainstream, national culture. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially during the Progressive Era , entrepreneurial academic leaders, research‐focused faculty, and ambitious young people transformed the traditional college into the forward‐looking university, the stepping‐stone to respectability and individual success, by expanding the curriculum and stimulating increased enrollment. Subject areas formerly considered inappropriate to a liberal education, such as agriculture and social work , now became accepted courses of study as colleges and universities sought to meet the increasing demand for more practical education and training. The nation's first undergraduate business school, the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, was founded at the University of Pennsylvania in 1881. Since 1920 . By the 1920s, the day of the so‐called self‐made man had passed; the college‐educated fraternity man became the arbiter of taste and training in American life. The boom in college enrollment after World War I forced Americans to confront the contradiction between their belief in individual opportunity and their desire to preserve the existing structure of social privilege. If a college education earmarked a student for future occupational achievement and social status, was higher education in a democracy a privilege or a right? How many and who should attend? What criteria should apply? Between the world wars, elite liberal arts colleges drawing from a national pool of applicants emerged, but they were selective institutions often rooted in class and ethnic prejudice. Most well‐known schools limited the number of Jewish and Catholic students. More subtle class distinctions among students were often reflected in student life on campus, for example in fraternity and sorority organizations. Admissions policies became a battleground between traditional institutional prerogatives and democratic social policy. Despite decades of rapid enrollment growth, the 1947 President's Commission on Higher Education concluded that American collegiate education still had not realized its democratic potential because of its high cost, restrictive curriculum, and racial and religious discrimination in admissions. Free and universal access to at least two years of postsecondary work, the commission insisted, should be a public policy goal. During the twentieth century, the federal government encouraged the growth of colleges and universities through financial support for individual students as well as through institutional support for faculty and research. In World War I, Washington created the Student Army Training Corps and the Reserve Officer Training Corps, but the number of participating students paled in comparison to the millions of veterans who flocked to college after World War II thanks to the Servicemen's Readjustment Act , or GI Bill of Rights (1944). The National Defense Student Loan Program of 1958, a response to the Soviet Union's launch of the Sputnik satellite, encouraged increased enrollment, particularly in science and engineering programs. President Lyndon B. Johnson 's Great Society reforms in the mid‐1960s and subsequent domestic social policy initiatives included grant programs for disadvantaged students and general loan programs for a broader range of students. By the end of the twentieth century, the federal government was allocating well over ten billion dollars a year to college and university research and development activities, mostly from the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Science Foundation , as well as the Department of Defense. As enrollments grew and a college degree became highly valued, institutions found their niche in an increasingly differentiated structure. Name changes often signaled an institution's expanded offerings and its quest for prestige: the teacher‐training “normal school” became, often around 1920, the “state teacher's college”; then the “state college”; and, finally, in the 1950s and 1960s, the “state university.” Over one thousand public two‐year junior and community colleges were established during the twentieth century to expand access to post‐secondary education. At the same time, a select number of liberal arts colleges and research universities emerged at the apex of the higher education pyramid. In 1995, over 12.2 million undergraduates were enrolled in nearly 3,700 institutions, about 11 million of them in public institutions. At the end of the twentieth century, colleges and universities constituted a significant industry in the United States, with annual expenditures in excess of $175 billion. Moreover, numerous high technology and biotechnology companies were affiliated with schools or their faculty. Intercollegiate athletics, especially football and basketball, supervised by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) , figured prominently in the nation's popular culture and media. From its beginnings in the 1630s, the American college had come a long way. See also African Americans ; Anti‐Semitism ; Biological Sciences ; Biotechnology Industry ; Earth Sciences ; Education: Education in Contemporary America ; Education: The Rise of the University ; Land Policy, Federal ; Philanthropy and Philanthropic Foundations ; Physical Sciences ; Protestantism ; Roman Catholicism ; Social Class ; Social Science ; Sports: Amateur Sports and Recreation ; Women's Rights Movements. Bibliography Frederick Rudolph , The American College and University , 1962. Laurence R. Veysey , The Emergence of the American University , 1965. Lawrence Cremin , American Education , 3 vols., 1970–1988. Frank Bowles and and Frank A. DeCosta , Between Two Worlds: A Profile of Negro Higher Education , 1971. Frederick Rudolph , Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study since 1636 , 1977. Harold Wechsler , The Qualified Student , 1977. Barbara M. Solomon , In the Company of Educated Women , 1985. David O. Levine , The American College and the Culture of Aspiration, 1915–1940 , 1986. Helen L. Horowitz , Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present , 1987. David O. Levine The Rise of the University The original institution for advanced education in America was the liberal arts college. Soon after the Revolutionary War , however, the term “university” arose, with several meanings implied. The University of the State of New York (1784–) and the short‐lived University of Maryland (1784–1805) were overarching structures, designed to encompass individual colleges much like the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The idea of a national university, first advocated by Benjamin Rush in 1787, envisioned an institution providing advanced studies for college graduates. The most common usage of the term, however, implied a college possessing one or more professional schools, much like the universities of continental Europe. The Pre‐modern University . By the 1820s, Harvard and Yale, each with a full complement of professional schools, exemplified what might be called the premodern university. American realities were a far cry from European models, however. Schools of medicine and law were essentially proprietary undertakings that accepted students whether or not they had attended college. In the colleges, all students took the same course, and no modern subjects were taught in depth. The only postbaccalaureate course, theology, was intended to train ministers rather than scholars. In the 1850s, critics lamented the inability of American institutions to cultivate and teach advanced knowledge. Henry Tappan in University Education (1851), praising the scientific achievements of German universities, advocated an American university that would teach beyond the collegiate level. As president of the University of Michigan (1853–1863), Tappan established an earned master's degree and encouraged faculty scholarship. More characteristic of the era, however, were the “scientific schools” established at Harvard and Yale. These new units accommodated both scientific studies and advanced learning without disturbing the separate operations of the college. Yale awarded the first American Ph.D.s in 1861 for work done in its scientific school. The American University Takes Shape . Following the Civil War , scientific schools, new institutes of technology, and colleges spawned by the 1862 Morrill Land Grant Act offered practical science‐based instruction. However, the issue of advanced learning reemerged most strongly at Harvard and the new Johns Hopkins University (1876). Charles William Eliot assumed the presidency of Harvard in 1869 with a clear vision of reform. His elective system allowed students to choose their own studies and permitted the learned Harvard faculty to teach advanced subjects. Believing that professional studies should be pursued at the postgraduate level, Eliot restructured Harvard's professional schools accordingly. Daniel Coit Gilman, president of Johns Hopkins from 1876 to 1901, designed it largely as a graduate university committed first and foremost to the advancement of knowledge and the professional organization of scholarship. Clark University, which opened in 1889 in Worcester, Massachusetts, solely for graduate studies, carried this notion even further. By 1890, a lively debate raged over the relation of the colleges to the emerging universities. Suggestions for shortening or subordinating the college course, however, were overcome by the college's resilience as a social and educational institution. Instead, the universities arose upon a collegiate base: a large faculty engaged in undergraduate teaching would also pursue scholarship and train future scholars. The new universities of Stanford (1891) and Chicago (1892), created through philanthropy, conformed in their own fashion to this pattern. This template also suited the stronger state universities, which included undergraduate professional schools as well as the arts and sciences core. The new universities proved highly popular. Their mushroom growth outdistanced all other types of institutions for the next quarter‐century, transforming American higher education. In 1900, the leaders in graduate education organized the Association of American Universities to define good practice in graduate education and also serve as an unofficial accrediting agency for colleges. The professional associations and learned journals of the various academic disciplines established a new canon of academic knowledge that ineluctably reshaped undergraduate colleges. Simultaneously, the new philanthropic foundations created by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller employed their wealth to bolster standards in higher education—standards largely derived from universities. The college at the heart of the American university became a source of considerable strength. Educators debated the nature of liberal education in an era of growing academic specialization, but the universities benefited from the high social value placed upon the collegiate experience. The collegiate dimension also ensured that American universities would differ markedly from one another. After World War I , these differences became more pronounced as public and private universities were shaped by different forces. The major state universities continued to grow by accommodating the burgeoning ranks of high‐school graduates. The wealthy private universities looked for support largely from their alumni, who favored greater investment in educational quality, both in the classroom and collegiate life. Although private universities restricted enrollments, their relative affluence allowed them to hire and retain distinguished faculty. The role of advancing knowledge was nevertheless furthered most notably in the interwar years by philanthropic foundations. Before World War I, universities could finance separate expenditures for research only through special gifts or endowments. The latter, for example, funded university museums and observatories , producing the characteristic American pattern of separately organized university research institutes. But such funds were rare. After the war, however, the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations sought to advance the natural and social sciences, principally through academic research. Foundation support of academic research had a double‐barreled effect. While it proved decisive in raising American science to world‐class status in many fields, especially nuclear physics, it was also instrumental in inducing universities consciously to expand their internal research capacity as a way of attracting foundation grants. By the 1930s, however, it became apparent that private research support was inadequate for the growing scientific needs of universities. World War II and Beyond . The services of university scientists during World War II demonstrated the value of academic research as a public investment. However, the blueprint for broad government support of pure science envisioned by Vannevar Bush in Science—The Endless Frontier (1945) was not followed and research funding remained, with slight alternations, in military channels. University research underwent unprecedented expansion in the early postwar period, but largely in defense‐related fields. University leaders continue to argue for greater support for disinterested basic research, and after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellites in 1957, they got their wish. Sputnik touched off a surge in civilian federal support for basic academic research. The National Science Foundation , created in 1950, now received significant appropriations to support research. The National Institutes of Health , aided by the spirit of the times and a powerful lobby, enormously increased its external grants. All told, federal support for academic research increased by 200 percent from 1959 to 1964, stimulating the most frenetic pace of academic development since the 1890s. In a veritable “academic revolution,” the values and specialized approach of the university graduate schools spread throughout American higher education. Numerous institutions now transformed themselves into “research universities” and their doctoral graduates filled the faculties of other institutions. Pundits such as the sociologist Daniel Bell ( The Coming of Post‐Industrial Society , 1973) identified the university as a central institution of the postindustrial, knowledge‐based societies. At this moment of apparent triumph, American universities were sorely tested. Beginning in 1965, disaffected students protested against the complicity of universities in the Vietnam War and Cold War militarism, and the alleged irrelevance of theoretical, disciplinary scholarship. The federal government, meanwhile, demanded more applied knowledge from its huge investment in university research. Universities themselves advocated a new national agenda of egalitarianism and social meliorism, but those concerns ill fit their natural propensities toward pursuing excellence in science and scholarship and training society's elite. American universities finally overcame the malaise of the 1970s by embracing a new role of economic relevance in the 1980s. Swept along by the revolution in the biotechnology industry , universities forged partnerships with American industry. Although this new role enlarged and complicated the university's mission, it was largely accommodated, as in the past, by adding ancillary units to the academic core. The twentieth‐century American university succeeded most emphatically in the mission that had been most problematic in the previous century: the advancement of knowledge. At century's end, universities conducted approximately half of the nation's basic research. To maintain this role, they had to adapt continually to rapidly changing frontiers of knowledge. The close link between research and graduate education has made American universities the world's chief magnet for advanced students and scholars—the position occupied by Germany a century before. Having become huge, complex organizations, serving American society in numerous and contested ways, American universities retained a resilience and strength stemming from the core mission they fashioned at the end of the nineteenth century: advancing knowledge through free, systematic, rational inquiry. See also Agricultural Education and Extension ; Education: Collegiate Education ; Engineering ; Gilded Age ; Philanthropy and Philanthropic Foundations ; Physical Sciences ; Sixties, The ; Social Sciences ; Servicemen's Readjustment Act ; Sports: Amateur Sports and Recreation. Bibliography Edwin E. Slosson , Great American Universities , 1910. Richard Storr , The Beginnings of Graduate Education , 1953. Laurence Veysey , The Emergence of the American University , 1965. Alexandra Oleson and John Voss, eds., The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America , 1979. Roger Geiger , To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900–1914 , 1986. Richard M. Freeland , Academia's Golden Age: Universities in Massachusetts, 1945–1970 , 1992. Roger Geiger , Research and Relevant Knowledge: American Research Universities since World War II , 1993. Burton R. Clark , Places of Inquiry: Research and Advanced Education in the Modern Universities , 1995. Roger L. Geiger Education in Contemporary America Few subjects generated more partisan rhetoric and less consensus in the 1990s than the fate of the public schools. The nation's schools have always had strident critics and impassioned defenders, but the demand for educational reforms echoed throughout the land as the twentieth century ended. Presidential hopefuls routinely aspired to become the “education president,” even though public schools were largely funded and controlled by state and local officials. Governors' task forces, big‐city mayors, and local worthies all favored school reforms and improvements, from charter schools to high‐stakes testing, from voucher plans to more funding for Head Start. In his final State of the Union message in January 2000, President Bill Clinton , proclaiming education central to the good life, called for a “twenty‐first‐century revolution in education, guided by our faith that every child can learn. Because education is more than ever the key to our children's future, we must make sure all our children have that key. That means quality preschool and after school, the best‐trained teachers in every classroom, and college opportunities for all our children.” What was at stake, he concluded, was the American dream. The centrality of education in everyday life in 1990s America was nothing short of astounding. The nation made impressive emotional and financial investments in its schools. By 1997, more than 46 million pupils were enrolled in the public schools. In 1995, roughly 65 percent of public‐school pupils were white, 35 percent minority (including 17 percent African American and 14 percent Hispanic American), reflecting America's ethnic and racial diversity. The teaching force (86 percent white) numbered well over 2 million, and the country spent many billions of dollars on salaries, school construction and repair, and innumerable school‐related services and programs, from school transportation to hot lunches to educating children with special needs. All this occurred in the Western world's most decentralized school system. Compared to European ministries of education, the U.S. Department of Education (created only in 1976) was relatively weak, poorly funded, and vastly less important in educational matters than state and local governments. Formal control over the nation's tens of thousands of schools resided in the hands of lay people elected or appointed to the school boards of more than fifteen thousand independent districts. The enormous reach and diversity of this vast educational enterprise, ranging from inner cities to suburbs and rural America, gave ample scope to critics and friends alike. The schools most often attracted criticisms as numerous campaigns for educational reform gained popularity. As in the past, many stakeholders in the schools—parents, politicians, educators, teachers, and pundits—joined the debate. Characterizing the countless reformers of the 1990s is complicated by the willingness of so many people to voice their complaints and offer proposals for improvement. One large strand of reform reflected the broad influence of a seminal report, A Nation at Risk (1983), published by a national commission under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education during the early years of Ronald Reagan 's presidency. Despite the occasional insults they hurled at the department, Republicans effectively used this report as a catalyst for larger national debates on the public schools. Indeed, they set the terms of most subsequent educational debates. Written at a time of national preoccupation with Japan's seemingly invincible economy and presumably superior educational system, A Nation at Risk blamed America's schools for the nation's economic woes and low industrial productivity. The sustained economic growth of the United States in the 1990s, in contrast, did not cause politicians to see public schools more favorably. Instead, Republicans and increasingly Democrats, too, chanted a familiar mantra: that the public schools were failing and test scores were unimpressive, reflecting permissive, liberal school policies and practices, leading to incivility and even violence in the classroom. Only more testing, accountability, and school choice could possibly save the beleaguered schools. Other interest groups agreed, while adding their own spin to school improvement. Evangelical Christians, among the strongest advocates of independent church schools and home schooling, lobbied conservative legislators to guarantee equal time for the teaching of “creation science” in biology classes and for voluntary prayer in the public schools. Back‐to‐basics zealots scrutinized textbooks for hints of anti‐Americanism, whole‐language teaching, and “secular humanism.” Admirers of free markets and liberty, energized by the collapse of communism abroad, pressed for public aid to private schools, whether through tuition tax credits or vouchers, whose constitutionality in pilot programs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Cleveland, Ohio; and other places remained unclear. Conservatives differed on the means but not the ends: to restore competitiveness, discipline, high achievement, and character training to the schools. That might mean ending social promotion, tightening graduation standards, and expunging the permissiveness widely perceived as the offspring of 1960s‐era social turmoil. Jeremiads on the state of youth and the schools proliferated. As Great Society liberalism became less influential within the Democratic party and identity politics gained momentum, left‐of‐center activists lost political clout. Many eloquently defended the public schools, but Republican criticisms of education remained popular throughout the 1990s. To oppose higher standards, testing, discipline, and market solutions to school improvement seemed out of step with the times, while holding schools more accountable, weakening teachers' unions, and upgrading the curriculum and graduation requirements had considerable appeal. Like sporting events, the test scores of school districts were publicized by the local media, to applaud the high achievers and chastize the rest (usually the poorest, nonwhite districts). Schoolteachers had long been criticized for their failures, so much of this was familiar, but it was persistent. After all, the left had offered many of the same criticisms of the nation's schools in the 1960s, calling them racist, sexist, class biased, and unable to educate the poor and minorities well. By the 1980s and 1990s conservatives threw most of the stones and set the agenda for most policy debates. More liberal or left‐of‐center educational activists remained on the defensive throughout the 1990s. Faculty who trained teachers on the nation's campuses had difficulty refuting attacks on teacher‐certification programs. With few exceptions, schools of education were widely regarded as diploma mills. Teachers' unions faced considerable hostility in this age of accountability, even though Albert Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers and other union leaders endorsed more teacher and student testing and tougher standards. Civil‐rights and feminist leaders in turn divided on the issue of single‐sex education, despite the long tradition of coeducation in the public schools, and liberals and activists similarly split on the question of racial integration, with a resurgence of support for racial separatism. African American parents in inner cities, whose children often faced the greatest educational hurdles, increasingly embraced the idea of “school choice,” even voucher plans, in defiance of traditional black leadership. Culture wars, debates over standards, and occasionally struggles for economic justice preoccupied many activists. In a seemingly endless battle over religion in the classroom, groups such as Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union spent much time and money in court challenges to the teaching of “creation science” and the reestablishment of school prayer. Battle lines formed over attempts to frame national history standards; while white liberals and Afrocentrists debated academic content, Congress loudly rejected a more multicultural approach to social studies and history teaching. California residents reflected the conservative mood by voting down state‐sponsored bilingual education programs, further alienating liberal elites from the masses of voters. As liberal groups filed lawsuits on behalf of poor districts, some states declared existing school‐funding formulas unconstitutional; legislatures proved less diligent in sharing the public purse with poorer districts. Despite splits within both conservative and liberal ranks, Republicans largely shaped late twentieth‐century educational debates. Democratic aspirants for office realized that conservative times required more moderate approaches to educational and social issues. Reacting to the wholesale rejection of liberalism in presidential elections in the 1980s, a new generation of politicians like Arkansas governor Bill Clinton shifted the Democratic party rightward. A leader in the moderate Democratic Leadership Council, Clinton joined with Republicans late in the decade to frame a series of national goals for America's schools for the year 2000. Less concerned with how to educate poor and minority children well, or with difficult issues related to multiculturalism, economic inequality, and racial injustice than with standards, discipline, competition, testing, and accountability, the goals reflected the broader public mood. While Democrats often resisted endorsing voucher or choice plans that included private and church‐related schools, the two major parties had become nearly indistinguishable on most educational issues. When President Clinton linked the fate of the public schools with the American dream in his 2000 State of the Union address, he tapped deep convictions about education's role in shaping the public good. To most students climbing the educational ladder, however, school seemed like a series of courses, tests, and quizzes on a wide variety of academic subjects. They often perceived the school as a social as much as an academic institution: a place offering sports teams, clubs, and peer groups. As a new century dawned, however, adults continued to argue mostly about how to toughen standards, enhance competition, and tighten discipline in institutions that seemed forever in need of reform. The administration of President George W. Bush (2001 – ) strongly backed “school choice” plans that funneled tax dollars to private, usually church-related schools. In 2002 a closely divided Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Cleveland's tuition‐voucher arrangement. The administration's showcase education bill, the No Child Left Behind Act, became law in 2002. Drafted by conservatives alarmed by the public schools' alleged academic failings, this measure, among other provisions, required every public school to administer standardized tests to all children from grades three through eight in reading, math, and science. Critics, including teachers, school administrators, and many state officials, charged that the measure represented an unprecedented level of federal meddling in public education, historically a local matter, forced instructors to “teach to the test”, discriminated against schools with large immigrant enrollments, and provided insufficient funds to pay for the new federal mandates. See also Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching ; Cultural Pluralism ; Evolution, Theory of ; Federal Government, Executive Branch: Other Departments (Department of Education) ; Post–Cold War Era. Bibliography Diane Ravitch and Maris Vinovskis, eds., Learning from the Past: Historical Perspectives on Current Educational Reforms , 1994. Wayne J. Urban and and Jennings L. Waggoner Jr. , American Education: A History , 1996. William J. Reese ; Updated by Paul S. Boyer
收到主编Murugan Ramalingam的邮件： Articles that have been published in the Journal of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering are now available for free download with effect from today, December 08, 2011. 到 http://www.aspbs.com/jbt.html 试了下，果然免费。 我下载了杂志的2个介绍材料，供感兴趣的朋友参考。 WelcometotheJournalofBiomaterialsandTissueEngineering.pdf preface.pdf （这个是各个洲的一些编委的致辞）
Published online 21 September 2011 | Nature 477 , 371 (2011) | doi:10.1038/477371a Column: World View China's new forests aren't as green as they seem Impressive reports of increased forest cover mask a focus on non-native tree crops that could damage the ecosystem, says Jianchu Xu. Jianchu Xu In the United Nations' 2011 International Year of Forests, China is heralded as a superstar. Almost single-handedly, the country has halted long-term forest loss across Asia, and even turned it into a net gain. Since the 1990s, China has planted more than 4 million hectares of new forest each year. Earlier this month, President Hu Jintao pledged that China would do even more. He told a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Beijing that the nation would increase its total area of forest by 40 million hectares over the next decade. China, he said, is ready to make new contributions to green, sustainable growth. It sounds impressive, but we risk failing to see the wood for the trees. In China, 'forest' includes uncut primary forest, regenerating natural forest and monoculture plantations of non-native trees. The last of these accounts for most of the 'improvement' in forest cover. The State Forestry Administration has claimed that total forest cover in China reached 20.36% in 2008. Most of this results from the increase in tree crops such as fruit trees, rubber and eucalyptus, not recovery of natural forest, yet Chinese data do not record this shift. The change threatens ecosystem services, particularly watershed protection and biodiversity conservation. “I have seen massive tree plantations on the Tibetan Plateau, in areas where forests never grew.” Exotic tree species are being planted in arid and semi-arid conditions, where perennial grasses with their extensive root systems would be better protectors of topsoil. Plantation monocultures harbour little diversity; they provide almost no habitat for the country's many threatened forest species. Plantations generate less leaf litter and other organic inputs than native forests, so soil fauna and flora decrease, and groundwater depletion can be exacerbated by deep-rooted non-native trees that use more water than native species. Afforestation in water-stressed regions might provide wind-breaks, and tree plantations offer some carbon storage. But these benefits come at a high cost to other ecological functions. Why the intense focus on forest cover? China has long promoted the planting of tree crops. Since 1999, the Grain for Green programme has resulted in some 22 million hectares of new trees on sloping farmland. The programme began after the 1998 Yangtze River floods, which the government blamed on loss of tree cover, although reductions in riparian buffers and soil infiltration capacity probably also had a major role. Since 2008, forest tenure reform has encouraged the privatization of former collective forests, with more than 100 million hectares affected. Privatization can benefit local economies. But in the absence of any management framework, it has also promoted conversion of natural forests into plantations: smallholders often fell natural forests for immediate income, then plant monoculture tree crops for long-term investment. Although the Chinese government has shown that it understands environmental fragility, its scientific and policy guidelines do not adequately address the country's diversity of landscapes and ecosystems. I have seen massive tree plantations on the Tibetan Plateau, in areas where forests never grew before. Local governments face the need to respond to the national imperative for increased forest cover by planting fast-growing species, while also generating the biggest local economic benefits possible. This explains why unsuitable species such as aspens are planted in north China, whereas eucalyptus and rubber trees proliferate in the south. Perhaps the International Year of Forests can help decision-makers to focus on the various meanings of 'forest', and the trade-offs each type entails. Natural recovery is still the best way to restore damaged forests, but restoration requires targeted involvement using the best science. Afforestation can restore ecosystem function only if the right species are planted in the right place. Further studies are needed on how the mix of species affects ecosystem functions. Sloping lands, for example, benefit from perennial root systems and associated soil microfauna, but trees are not the only, or necessarily the best, way to establish these root systems. China's forestry mandate should focus on enhancing environmental services, but policy-makers cannot ignore rural livelihoods. Technical know-how should be provided to local foresters and farmers. Doing away with narrow, one-size-fits-all management targets would also help. The country, with its state-managed market economy, can afford direct payments for forest ecosystem services, but they should only be offered for natural or regenerated forests with proven biological or ecological value. As an ecologist and agroforestry practitioner, I would like to see China establish parallel forest-management programmes for recovery and restoration of natural forests, and for incorporating working trees into farmlands. Each should include best practices from ecosystem science; a clear definition of tree crop plantations for timber or non-timber products would clarify the separate systems. A dual strategy would require increased collaboration throughout China's land-management ministries, well supported by interdisciplinary research. But it could ensure that China's massive investment in forests provides maximum benefits, to both local livelihood and the environment. Jianchu Xu is a senior scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre and a professor at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Formin Mediated Actin Cytoskeleton Organization ---Not Only for Tip-growth The actin cytoskeleton is an important regulator of cell expansion and morphogenesis in plants. Formins have been found to exist in many eukaryotic organisms including animals, fungi and plants , and are involved in many fundamental cellular processes including cytokinesis, cell motility and polarity by regulation of actin dynamics. Previous studies of actin in plants mainly focused on tip growth of pollen tubes and root hairs. My recent work identified a Class II formin BUI1 ( BENT UPPERMOST INTERNODE1) in rice and found that BUI1 could modulate actin dynamics and cell polar expansion. BUI1 encodes the class II formin FH5. Mutation of BUI1 results in severely disruption of the actin cytoskeleton and consequently inhibition of cell expansion. In collaboration with Dr. HUANG Shanjin’ group from the Institute of Botany, CAS, we dissected the biochemical functions of BUI1 and found that BUI1 could efficiently promote actin filament assembly and actin bundling. Thus, our study identified a rice formin protein BUI1 that regulates de novo actin nucleation and spatial organization of the actin filaments, which are important for proper cell expansion and rice morphogenesis. The identification of BUI1 also reveals a new regulatory mechanism underlying the development of rice internodes. Link: Plant Cell 2011 23: 661-680. First Published on February 9, 2011; doi:10.1105/tpc.110.081802 BENDED UPPERMOST INTERNODE1 Encodes a Class II Formin Critical For Actin Dynamics and Rice Development (A) Wild type (Zhejing 22) (left) and bui1 (right) plants. (B) Panicle exsertion of wild type (the left one) and bui1 (the right three). (C) and (D) Longitudinal sections of the uppermost internodes of the wild type ( C) and bui1 ( D) at heading stage. (E) and (F) F-actin organization in the root elongation region cells of the wild type (E) and bui1 (F) . (G) and (H) BUI1 promotes profilin/Oregon-green-actin polymerization. (I) and (J) BUI1 bundles actin filaments.
Among patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and hypertension, taking at least 1 antihypertensive medication at bedtime significantly improves blood pressure (BP) control, with an associated decrease in risk for cardiovascular events, according to new research. Ramón C. Hermida, PhD, and colleagues from the Bioengineering and Chronobiology Laboratories at the University of Vigo, Campus Universitario, Spain, published their findings online October 24 in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology . According to the researchers, the beneficial effect of taking BP medication at night has been previously documented, but "the potential reduction in risk associated with specifically reducing sleep-time BP is still a matter of debate." The current prospective study sought to investigate in hypertensive patients with CKD whether bedtime treatment with hypertension medications better controls BP and reduces CVD risk compared with treatment on waking. The study included 661 patients with CKD who were randomly assigned either to take all prescribed hypertension medications on awakening or to take at least 1 of them at bedtime. Ambulatory BP at 48 hours was measured at least once a year and/or at 3 months after any adjustment in treatment. The composite measure of cardiovascular events used included death, myocardial infarction, angina pectoris, revascularization, heart failure, arterial occlusion of lower extremities, occlusion of the retinal artery, and stroke. The investigators controlled their results for sex, age, and diabetes. Patients were followed for a median of 5.4 years; during that time, patients who took at least 1 BP-lowering medication at bedtime had approximately one third of the CVD risk compared with those who took all medications on awakening (adjusted hazard ratio , 0.31; 95% confidence interval , 0.21 - 0.46; P .001). A similar significant reduction in risk with bedtime dosing was noted when the composite CVD outcome included only cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, and stroke (adjusted HR, 0.28; 95% CI, 0.13 - 0.61; P .001). Patients taking their medications at bedtime also had a significantly lower mean BP while sleeping, and a greater proportion of these patients had ambulatory BP control (56% vs 45%; P = .003). The researchers estimate that for each 5-mm-Hg decrease in mean sleep-time systolic BP, there was a 14% reduction in the risk for cardiovascular events during follow-up ( P .001). According to Dr. Hermida and colleagues, "treatment at bedtime is the most cost-effective and simplest strategy of successfully achieving the therapeutic goals of adequate asleep BP reduction and preserving or re-establishing the normal 24-hour BP dipping pattern." The authors suggest that a potential explanation for the benefit of nighttime treatment may be associated with the effect of nighttime treatment on urinary albumin excretion levels. "We previously demonstrated that urinary albumin excretion was significantly reduced after bedtime, but not morning, treatment with valsartan," they note. In addition, this reduction was independent of 24-hour changes of BP, but correlated with a decline in BP during sleep. 来源： http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/752348
Folic acid supplements taken from 4 weeks before to 8 weeks after conception have been linked to a significantly lower prevalence of severe language delay in children, according to a study published in the October 12 issue of JAMA . "Severe language delay is associated with a range of childhood neuropsychiatric disorders, such as autism, and is also associated with difficulties in achieving literacy," lead author Christine Roth, ClinPsyD, from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo, told Medscape Medical News . Even though half of the children who are rated as having language delay at age 3 years, especially if it is in the moderate range, grow out of it by the time they reach school age, many continue to struggle with language difficulties, said Dr. Roth, who is also a visiting researcher at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City. Studies have shown that periconceptional folic acid supplements reduce the risk for neural tube defects, but none of the trials have followed-up to investigate whether the supplements have effects on neurodevelopment that only show after birth, she said. "Unlike the United States, Norway does not fortify foods with folic acid, increasing the contrast in relative folate status between women who do and do not take folic acid supplements," she noted. With this in mind, Dr. Roth set out to specifically study periconceptional folic acid use and language delay. The analysis included 19,956 boys and 18,998 girls born to mothers participating in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study between 1999 and 2008. The researchers used data on children born before 2008 whose mothers returned the 3-year follow-up questionnaire by June 2010. The investigators found that 204 children (0.5%) had severe language delay, defined as minimal expressive language (only 1-word or unintelligible utterances). Of the 9052 children whose mothers took no folic acid supplements, severe language delay was reported in 81 children (0.9%), but among the 7127 children whose mothers did take folic acid supplements, severe language delay was reported in 28 children (0.4%). "If in future research this relationship were shown to be causal, it would have important implications for understanding the biological processes underlying disrupted neurodevelopment, for the prevention of neurodevelopmental disorders, and for policies of folic acid supplementation for women of reproductive age," senior author Ezra Susser, MD, DrPh, from the Mailman School of Public Health and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York City, said in a statement. Dr. Roth added that Norwegian women should follow the current recommendations of starting to take a folic acid supplement of 0.4 mg daily 1 month before becoming pregnant and continuing through the second to third month of pregnancy. "This means, of course, that women who might become pregnant should take supplements, so that they will be taking supplements if pregnancy does occur." However, she stops short of saying that the findings should be used in creating formal policy recommendations. "Our study does offer some further evidence in favor of the current recommendations, but we caution that it is premature to use it as a basis for formulating policy recommendations," she said. The study was supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education and Research, the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Norwegian Research Council. Dr. Roth and Dr. Susser have disclosed no relevant financial relationships. JAMA . 2011; 306:1566-1573. Abstract 来源： http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/751599
Current guidelines to diagnose miscarriage are insufficient and unreliable, and following them may result in the inadvertent termination of wanted pregnancies, according to the results of a systematic review and 3 studies published online October 13 in Ultrasound Obstetrics and Gynecology . "This research shows that the current guidance on how to use ultrasound scans to detect a miscarriage may lead to a wrong diagnosis in some cases," Professor Basky Thilaganathan, MD, editor-in-chief of Ultrasound Obstetrics and Gynecology , said in a news release. "Health professionals need clearer evidence-based guidance to prevent this happening." Nearly 2 decades ago, a landmark study from Cardiff, United Kingdom, first showed that early pregnancies may be erroneously diagnosed as a miscarriage. Investigators of the present studies suggest that their findings will facilitate a more precise definition of miscarriage, and they stress the importance of intervening only when the diagnosis of miscarriage is unequivocal. Systematic Review of Accuracy of First-Trimester Ultrasound Findings of the systematic review , which looked at the accuracy of first-trimester ultrasound in diagnosing early embryonic death, indicated that the evidence base for the current guidelines is old and unreliable. "The majority of ultrasound standards used for diagnosis of miscarriage are based on limited evidence," senior review author Shakila Thangaratinam, MD, from the Women's Health Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom, said in a news release. The reviewers searched MEDLINE from 1951 to 2011, Embase from 1980 to 2011, and the Cochrane Library in 2010, and found 8 relevant studies with 4 test categories, enrolling a total of 872 women. These studies assessed the accuracy of first-trimester ultrasonography in pregnant women for the diagnosis of early embryonic demise. The reviewers calculated accuracy measures including sensitivity, specificity, and likelihood ratios for abnormal and normal test results for each study, and for each test threshold. Only 2 tests had a lower limit of the 95% confidence interval (CI) for specificity greater than 0.95: an empty gestational sac with mean diameter of 25 mm or more, and absent yolk sac with a mean gestational sac diameter of 20 mm or more (specificity, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.96 - 1.00 for both). However, even a 95% CI of 0.96 to 1.00 indicates that up to 4 of every 100 diagnoses may be a false-positive. On the basis of their findings, the reviewers concluded that few high-quality prospective data exist on which to base guidelines for the accurate diagnosis of early pregnancy demise. Their findings were limited by the small number and poor quality of the published studies, small sample sizes, the age of the studies (most were performed 20 years ago), the enrollment of symptomatic as well as asymptomatic women, and heterogeneity in tests and outcome assessment. None of the studies evaluated the reproducibility and repeatability of early pregnancy measurements, and only half had access to an endovaginal probe. "Before guidelines for the safe management of threatened miscarriage can be formulated, there is an urgent need for an appropriately powered, prospective study using current ultrasound technology and an agreed reference standard for pregnancy success or loss," the review authors write. They note that most pregnancy screening tests, such as those for Down syndrome or gestational diabetes, require optimal sensitivity but can tolerate a low false-positive rate (FPR). However, it is essential to have a highly specific test with a zero FPR for threatened early pregnancy loss, for once early embryonic demise is diagnosed, the uterus is evacuated. The only conclusive criterion to diagnose miscarriage is documented spontaneous expulsion of histologically confirmed pregnancy tissue or retained products in the uterus in a woman with previous ultrasound findings of intrauterine gestational sac. Most of the studies identified in this review did not use rigorous standards to diagnose early pregnancy demise. Research Studies "Many of us in clinical practice have been concerned for some time about possible errors relating to the diagnosis of miscarriage," Professor Dirk Timmerman, MD, PhD, from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, who coauthored the research studies, said in a news release. "We are pleased that our data have identified where these errors might occur, so that we can prevent mistakes happening in the future." Current practice to confirm clinical suspicions of miscarriage is to measure gestational sac and embryo size using ultrasound, but cutoff values to define miscarriage are not always reliable. If repeat measurement 7 to 10 days later shows no growth, clinicians often assume there has been a miscarriage. However, a multicenter observational study by Yazan Abdallah, MD, from Imperial College London, Hammersmith Campus, United Kingdom, and colleagues of 1060 women showed that even normal, viable pregnancies may not measurably grow in size during this time. There was an overlap in mean gestational sac diameter (MSD) growth rates between viable and nonviable pregnancies, and there was no cutoff for MSD growth below which a viable pregnancy could be safely excluded, suggesting that criteria to diagnose miscarriage based on growth in MSD and crown–rump length (CRL) are potentially unsafe. In this study, a cutoff value for CRL growth of 0.2 mm/day was always associated with miscarriage, and finding an empty gestational sac on 2 scans more than 7 days apart was highly likely to indicate miscarriage, regardless of growth. "By identifying this problem, we hope that guidelines will be reviewed so that inadvertent termination of wanted pregnancies cannot happen," senior author Tom Bourne, PhD, from University Hospitals, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, said in the news release. "We also hope backing will be given to even larger studies to test new guidelines prospectively. Currently there is a risk that some women seeking reassurance with pain or bleeding in early pregnancy may be told they have had a miscarriage, and choose to undergo surgical or medical treatment when the pregnancy is in fact healthy." A second multicenter, observational cross-sectional study of 1060 women, also performed by Dr. Abdallah and colleagues, investigated the limitations of current definitions of miscarriage using MSD and CRL measurements. When embryo and yolk sac were both absent, the FPR for miscarriage was 4.4% using an MSD cutoff of 16 mm, 0.5% using a cutoff of 20 mm, and 0% using a cutoff of MSD 21 mm or greater. If a yolk sac was present, but not an embryo, the FPR for miscarriage was 2.6% using an MSD cutoff of 16 mm, 0.4% using a cutoff of 20 mm, and 0% using a cutoff of MSD 21 mm or greater. For a visible embryo with no detectable heartbeat, using a CRL cutoff of either 4 or 5 mm yielded an FPR for miscarriage of 8.3%, and there were no FPRs using a CRL cutoff of 5.3 mm or greater. On the basis of their findings, the investigators concluded that some current definitions used to diagnose miscarriage are potentially unsafe, and that current national guidelines should be reviewed to avoid inadvertent termination of wanted pregnancies. They also suggested that using an MSD cutoff of more than 25 mm and a CRL cutoff of more than 7 mm could minimize the risk for a false-positive diagnosis of miscarriage. The last study was a small cross-sectional study that showed that when different clinicians measure the same pregnancy in the first trimester using transvaginal sonography, variation in CRL or MSD may be up to 20%. If the first measurement is an overestimate and the second measurement, taken a few days later, is an underestimate, the false conclusion could be reached that there had been no growth. The higher interobserver variability for MSD would caution against diagnosing miscarriage from this measurement in the absence of a visible embryo or yolk sac. "These errors could lead to a false diagnosis of miscarriage being made in some women," lead study author Anne Pexsters, MD, also from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, said in a news release. "For most women, sadly there is nothing we can do to prevent a miscarriage, but we do need to make sure we don't make things worse by intervening unnecessarily in ongoing pregnancies," Dr. Bourne concluded. "We hope our work means that the guidelines to define miscarriage are made as watertight as we would expect for defining death at any other stage of life." Some of the study authors report various financial relationships and/or support with/from the Research Foundation–Flanders, the Imperial Healthcare National Health Service Trust National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre, Research Council, Ambiorics, MaNet, Optimization in Engineering, and/or Belgian Federal Science Policy Office. Ultrasound Obstet Gynecol . Published online October 13, 2011. Review full text , Abdallah study 1 , Abdallah study 2 , Pexsters study 来源： http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/751613
Banana threat averted? Not quite yet by Jeremy on October 10, 2011 Strange news from Scidev.net , which reports that: esults of a field study in Davao City, on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, show that two Cavendish varieties are highly resistant to Panama disease. These varieties, he said, were produced in Taiwan by selecting improved mutants from the Cavendish variety. Why strange? For one thing, because Cavendish bananas have long been resistant to Panama disease. That’s why they are so widespread, because they replaced Gros Michel, the previous dominant variety, which was wiped out commercially by Panama disease in the 1950s and 1960s. To give credit, Scidev.net explains that the threat is a new form of Panama disease, which is caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum , known as Tropical Race 4. Cavendish was resistant to race 1 of Fusarium wilt, to which Gros Michel was susceptible. Tropical Race 4 attacks Cavendish too. But not, according to the report, all Cavendish plants. Some clones, like those ones from Taiwan, are showing resistance. Strange too because the thrust of the Scidev.net piece is that Filipino scientists are calling on the government to establish a National Research, Development and Extension Center for Banana. But hang on. Tropical Race 4 is a global menace. The very fact that Taiwanese selections are showing promise on Mindanao in the Philippines should give pause. Wouldn’t it be much more efficient for all governments in the region and beyond to contribute to a global effort? The big banana concerns were to some extent to blame for the demise of Gros Michel and the march of Panama disease, as they abandoned infected plantations and brought new areas into cultivation until there was nowhere left to run and they had to switch. This time around, they could support a globally co-ordinated effort to find and distribute more resistant varieties.
Both BRCA1 and BRCA2 germ-line mutations are associated with early ovarian cancer, but new observational data suggest that each might require different treatment strategies, according to a report published in the October12 issue of JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. The study found that women with high-grade ovarian cancer live longer and respond better to platinum-based chemotherapy when their tumors have BRCA2 genetic mutations than when they have wild-type BRCA. The same does not hold true for BRCA1 mutations. The analysis looked at 316 cases of high-grade serous ovarian cancer; 29 tumors had BRCA2 mutations and 37 had BRCA1 mutations. This suggests that stratification according to BRCA status will become more important in ovarian cancer clinical trials, senior author Wei Zhang, PhD, from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, told Medscape Medical News. The findings also suggest that combining drugs that damage DNA (such as platinum) with newer drugs that block DNA repair might be particularly effective in these cancers, said Dr. Zhang. However, an expert not involved with the study questioned the findings because of the small number of patients with BRCA mutations. "It is fundamentally unsound to evaluate clinical epidemiology with sample sizes of 35 and 27 (BRCA1 and BRCA2) — or 37 and 29, depending on whether one looks at abstract or table — and draw firm conclusions. The power is low," said Paul Pharoah, MD, senior clinical research fellow at Cambridge Cancer Center in the United Kingdom, in an email. He reviewed the study for Medscape Medical News. The study is also partly in error, said Dr. Pharoah, who has conducted a similar study in these patients but with much a larger sample size. "I know from our dataset (over 10 times the sample size) that both BRCA1 and BRCA2 are associated with improved survival . This was statistically robust. So Yang's conclusion is partly wrong," he said, referring to study lead author Da Yang, PhD, who is also from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Lack of Statistical Significance With Overall Survival Differences According to the authors, BRCA2 and BRCA1 are both tumor-suppressing genes that affect DNA repair, but in different ways. BRCA2 mutations change the RAD51 protein, which is required for the repair of double-strand DNA breaks by homologous recombination. Without RAD51, the tumor cell cannot repair DNA damaged by antitumor treatment. In contrast, BRCA1 is involved in multiple functions (including DNA damage response and checkpoint control). A mutant BRCA1 can cause failure in a function and set the cell up for tumorigenesis without making it more vulnerable to drugs such as cisplatin. "Uncovering the separate potential effects of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations takes us a step toward a more personalized approach to treating ovarian cancer, and perhaps other cancers," Dr. Zhang said in a press statement. "This paper suggests that those 2 genes, and the many others involved in DNA repair, are prime targets for further research." This teasing apart of BRCA1 and BRCA2 roles in ovarian cancer is possible because of The Cancer Genome Atlas project (TCGA). TCGA reported more than 400 high-grade serous ovarian cancer cases in which an exhaustive analysis of each tumor's genome and comprehensive clinical data on each patient were combined. "TCGA gave us enough analytical power to differentiate between BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations and to conduct a survival analysis," said Dr. Yang. The outcome measures in the study were overall survival, progression-free survival, and chemotherapy response. The analysis showed 5-year survival of 61% with BRCA2 mutations and 25% with wild-type BRCA. Three-year progression-free survival was 44% with BRCA2 mutations and 16% with wild-type BRCA2. Overall survival was not significantly different between BRCA2 and BRCA1 mutations (P= .17), but the progression-free survival difference was (P=.05). BRCA1 mutations did not affect either overall survival or progression-free survival. The response rate to platinum chemotherapy was 100% in patients with BRCA2 mutations, 82% in those with wild-type BRCA2, and 80% in those with BRCA1 mutations. Response duration was 18 months with BRCA2 mutations, 11.7 months with wild-type BRCA2, and 12.5 months for BRCA1 mutations. In an accompanying editorial, VictorR. Grann, MD, MPH, and RamonE. Parsons, MD, PhD, from the Columbia University Medical Center in New York City, write that the study "provides a major advance in the understanding of the use of new treatments for ovarian cancer among patients with BRCA mutations by demonstrating a difference in the response among patients with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations diagnosed with ovarian cancer." They and the study authors all say that the next step is to enroll these patients in randomized clinical trials to test whether BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carriers respond differently to treatment. However, Dr. Pharoah's research represents a challenge to this opinion. He and his group have investigated BRCA mutations and clinical outcomes using the same TCGA data plus additional cases collected worldwide — producing a much larger dataset of more than 1100 BRCA1 mutation carriers, 300 BRCA2 mutation carriers, and 2000 noncarriers. They reported their data at the 2011 meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. That study has been submitted for publication. Dr. Pharoah also emphasized the fact that the overall survival differences between the 2 mutation types in the study by Dr. Yang and colleagues was not statistically significant. "There is no significant difference between BRCA1 and BRCA2 (which is not highlighted in the abstract or press release). Thus, it is not a sound conclusion that BRCA2 but not BRCA1 is associated with improved survival. This apparent contradiction is all a problem with sample size and an overestimation of statistical significance. With just 35 BRCA1 cases, the power to detect a difference with noncarriers is limited, so the conclusion is not sound." Dr. Pharoah added that "even where a result is statistically significant, it is more likely to be wrong when the sample size is small than when it is large — a fact that is very rarely appreciated." The authors have disclosed no relevant financial relationships. JAMA. 2011;306:1557-1565, 1597-1598. 来源 ： http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/751334
稿件被审稿人拒绝，再也正常不过了。不过有的审稿人实在可恶，写出不负责任的拒稿意见。以下就是几例这样的审稿意见。 1) Although the results seem interesting and correct, the ideas and methods are standard and the results and examples are simple. Hence I do not think this paper deserves to be published in XX. 2) The studied problem is interesting, but, overall, the paper does not reach the high standards of XX. 3) The argument here is standard and not suprizing. the paper does not meet the high standards of XX. 4) Although the paper has some merit it does not contain new ideas. Most of the ideas have appeared in the literature. As a result the paper does not meet the standards of XX. 5) The argument in Section 3 is standard (once the results in Section 2 are derived). Many authors are now presenting results similar to section 2. Unfortunately this paper does not meet the HIGH standards of XX.
http://www.xys.org/xys/ebooks/others/science/dajia8/chinanano.txt 打ChinaNano2007会议的假 作者：与会者 由国家纳米科技指导协调委员会主办、国家纳米科学中心承办的“2007中国 国际纳米科学技术会议（ChinaNANO 2007）”于2007年6月4日在北京召开，会议 为期三天。http://www.chinanano.org/ 本人参加了这次会议，觉得会议的组织以及举办的过程中有一些问题值得改 进。 本次会议吸引国内某些人员与会的最大卖点恐怕是其论文宣称可以发表在 Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology（影响因子2.194）上。 1． 宣传有误导的嫌疑 在第二轮会议通知中说：“The accepted manuscripts will be published in “Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (JNN)” by American Scientific Publishers. The manuscripts will be reviewed following the normal peer-review process of the JNN. ” 而在最后一轮通知中没提评审的问题直接说The proceeding of ChinaNANO 2007 will be published by American Scientific Publishers in its periodical “Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology”, which will be available for general sales. 事实是绝大多数文章都不可能出现在Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology上；事实是不少人误认为交了钱就很有可能（最起码超过一半的 可能）文章被发表。 2． 没有同行评议意见就退稿，千篇一律的退稿信见附录1。 我相信组委会并没有象他们说的那样following the normal peer-review process of the JNN。难道JNN拒稿从来不附加审稿意见吗？唯一的解释就是组 委会并没有把所有文章送审，大家被骗了。从会议结束到收到拒稿信的时间将近 6个月，不送审还压稿这么久是很不道德的行为。没看就把多数人的文章贬的一 无是处真是头一回见,中国人的婉转哪里去了? 3．不参加会议在主席台还有牌位 开幕式主席台上大概有十个座位左右，都是大牛。但有一个座位是空着的， 很难看，只有一个叫路甬祥的牌位在那里空荡荡。后来主席宣布此公太忙来不了， 他百忙之中找人捎了一封贺信（全无新意，大意见附录2），听着主席宣读贺信， 我等真是感激泣零,人家那么忙还没忘了我们。一封信也要占个座真是神气。 4．只交钱不参加会议的不少。 是误导的结果。后来证明是为大会做捐献了。建议以后参加会议的动机不要 只是为了发文章，否则很容易被组委会利用敛财。 5．组委会回信拖沓 参会前有许多问题需要和组委会沟通，我有好几封email如石沉大海，最后 只能打电话才能解决问题。即使回信也很慢。 整体感觉ChinaNANO 2007会议是一部骗钱的机器。 附录1： Dear Author, The review procedure of your submission to the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology has been completed. Your paper has been reviewed by experts in the field. However we are unable to accept it for publication.Many meritorious papers are submitted to the CHINANANO 2007 this year, and only a small fraction can be published. We are unable to publish original work that has considered scientific value unless it meets the strict standards of the journal, and fits within our scope of interest and expertise. Thank you for your submission to Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. Yours sincerely, Guest Editor The Organizing Committee of ChinaNANO2007 附录2： 全国人大副委员长、中国科学院院长路甬祥院士专门为大会的召开发来贺信。 他在贺信中对我国纳米科技发展给予充分肯定。他指出，我国是世界上最先开始 纳米科技研究的国家之一，研究工作所取得的成就已为国际学术界所认同。路甬 祥院士进一步强调纳米科技发展要与产业结合。他指出，伴随中国经济的高速发 展，今天，中国的纳米科技不仅仅在学术研究领域产生了深远的影响，其发展已 经开始进入工业产品的新阶段中。 (XYS20071214) 作者：与会者 由国家纳米科技指导协调委员会主办、国家纳米科学中心承办的“2007中国 国际纳米科学技术会议（ChinaNANO 2007）”于2007年6月4日在北京召开，会议 为期三天。http://www.chinanano.org/ 本人参加了这次会议，觉得会议的组织以及举办的过程中有一些问题值得改 进。 本次会议吸引国内某些人员与会的最大卖点恐怕是其论文宣称可以发表在 Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology（影响因子2.194）上。 1． 宣传有误导的嫌疑 在第二轮会议通知中说：“The accepted manuscripts will be published in “Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (JNN)” by American Scientific Publishers. The manuscripts will be reviewed following the normal peer-review process of the JNN. ” 而在最后一轮通知中没提评审的问题直接说The proceeding of ChinaNANO 2007 will be published by American Scientific Publishers in its periodical “Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology”, which will be available for general sales. 事实是绝大多数文章都不可能出现在Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology上；事实是不少人误认为交了钱就很有可能（最起码超过一半的 可能）文章被发表。 2． 没有同行评议意见就退稿，千篇一律的退稿信见附录1。 我相信组委会并没有象他们说的那样following the normal peer-review process of the JNN。难道JNN拒稿从来不附加审稿意见吗？唯一的解释就是组 委会并没有把所有文章送审，大家被骗了。从会议结束到收到拒稿信的时间将近 6个月，不送审还压稿这么久是很不道德的行为。没看就把多数人的文章贬的一 无是处真是头一回见,中国人的婉转哪里去了? 3．不参加会议在主席台还有牌位 开幕式主席台上大概有十个座位左右，都是大牛。但有一个座位是空着的， 很难看，只有一个叫路甬祥的牌位在那里空荡荡。后来主席宣布此公太忙来不了， 他百忙之中找人捎了一封贺信（全无新意，大意见附录2），听着主席宣读贺信， 我等真是感激泣零,人家那么忙还没忘了我们。一封信也要占个座真是神气。 4．只交钱不参加会议的不少。 是误导的结果。后来证明是为大会做捐献了。建议以后参加会议的动机不要 只是为了发文章，否则很容易被组委会利用敛财。 5．组委会回信拖沓 参会前有许多问题需要和组委会沟通，我有好几封email如石沉大海，最后 只能打电话才能解决问题。即使回信也很慢。 整体感觉ChinaNANO 2007会议是一部骗钱的机器。 附录1： Dear Author, The review procedure of your submission to the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology has been completed. Your paper has been reviewed by experts in the field. However we are unable to accept it for publication.Many meritorious papers are submitted to the CHINANANO 2007 this year, and only a small fraction can be published. We are unable to publish original work that has considered scientific value unless it meets the strict standards of the journal, and fits within our scope of interest and expertise. Thank you for your submission to Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. Yours sincerely, Guest Editor The Organizing Committee of ChinaNANO2007 附录2： 全国人大副委员长、中国科学院院长路甬祥院士专门为大会的召开发来贺信。 他在贺信中对我国纳米科技发展给予充分肯定。他指出，我国是世界上最先开始 纳米科技研究的国家之一，研究工作所取得的成就已为国际学术界所认同。路甬 祥院士进一步强调纳米科技发展要与产业结合。他指出，伴随中国经济的高速发 展，今天，中国的纳米科技不仅仅在学术研究领域产生了深远的影响，其发展已 经开始进入工业产品的新阶段中。 (XYS20071214)
经过又一轮盲审，本届全美数学建模邀请赛Ａ／Ｂ／Ｃ三题的最佳解决方案出炉。 清华大学－Ａ题 电子科技大学－Ｂ题 洪堡州立大学－Ｃ题 最佳方案（稍微有些缩略的版本）将在The UMAP Journal第３２卷第２期刊出 －－－－来自组委会发给所有Ｏｕｔｓｔａｎｄｉｎｇ／ｆｉｎａｌ ｐａｐｅｒｓ导师的信的一部分－－－－ The Outstanding MCM and ICM papers to be published in The UMAP Journal Vol. 32, No. 2 are those from: A. Tsinghua University B. University of Electronic Science and Technology C. Humboldt State University The papers were selected "blind," that is, without knowing which institutions they came from. I regret that we could not publish all the Outstanding papers.
现在在Nature and Science 上发表论文很容易，你信么？ 看看下面引自某论坛的帖子，你就信了 “原来有一本期刊杂志叫做Nature and Science，只要在这上面发篇文章，就能往简历里写上paper published on Nature and Science。这本杂志自然也成为了很多学者的厚爱，连这种文章Comparison Analysis of Foreign Capital Used in China’s Northeast Three Provinces都能发表。” 期刊网址 https://www.msu.edu/~isa/ ps：原帖如此，对帖子中的论文无轻视之意。
标签: published
