Phil R. Manning "Can you prove that continuing education really makes any difference?" Over the years, educators concerned with continuing education (CE) for health professionals have either heard or voiced that question in one form or another more than once. But because of the difficulty in measuring the specific effects of a given course, program, or conference, the question has not been answered satisfactorily. Since CE is costly, since CE is now mandated in some states for re-registration, and since its worth has not been proven in for- mal evaluation research, the pressure to evaluate...

Deals with various issues within the field of educational assessment, emphasizing those which have sparked the US public policy debate in recent years. Much of this volume centres on the impact of testing on various subgroups of the population, including blacks, hispanics and young children.

That there is diversity in the work and retirement behaviors and at titudes of our small-town respondents is obvious. Thus, attempts to legislate broad solutions to problems of Social Security and other factors of most interest to older persons can be assured of having both supporters and detractors among the elderly in rural settings as well as among other age groups. Within the diversity observed, how ever, are some results requiring further attention. The relatively positive adjustment to not working of the retired men in the study bodes well for those expecting to leave the work force in...

Bernard R. Gifford and Linda C. Wing Standardized testing has become a ubiquitous feature of American life. As a major source of information for reducing uncertainty in the alJocation of merit based educational, training, and employment opportunities, testing affects the life chances of individuals. Moreover, testing inOuences the way in which our societyjudgesitselfandprovides for ourcollective future. Test scores may determine a child's admission to lcindergarten and promotion to the fIrst grade. Most states award the high school diploma only ifa student has passed a minimum competency...

David B. Smith This is a book about the application of economic theory to a unique form of social control - public utility regulation. A central theme of this work is to examine the role that economics has played in shaping the rationale and direction of regulatory practices. While economic theory has played an important role in the shaping of regulatory policy in the past, it has an even greater potential role to play in the future as the regulatory community grapples with the many challenges of a changing economic environment. This is a very timely and much needed piece of work that can...

This monograph is concerned with the determination of the allowed rate ofreturn in rate cases which, in part, determines the rates ofcharge to customers of public utilities. Rate of return determination has been a central topic in utility regulation for a century. Recent changes in the traditionally regulated markets - electricity, gas, and telephone - have shoved discussion of rate of return determination into the background, replacing it by technology changes, competition, downsizing, deregulation, and reg'ulatory incentive systems. These new issues have made the regula- tory sector, which...

We have reached the double conclusion: that invention is choice, that this choice is imperatively governed by the sense of scientific beauty. Hadamard (1945), Princeton University Press, by permission. The great majority of all sources and amplifiers of microwave energy, and all devices for receiving or detecting microwaves, use a semiconductor active element. The development of microwave semiconductor devices, de scribed in this book, has proceeded from the simpler, two-terminal, devices such as GUNN or IMPATT devices, which originated in the 1960s, to the sophisticated monolithic circuit...

The debate between the proponents of "classical" and "Bayesian" statistica} methods continues unabated. It is not the purpose of the text to resolve those issues but rather to demonstrate that within the realm of actuarial science there are a number of problems that are particularly suited for Bayesian analysis. This has been apparent to actuaries for a long time, but the lack of adequate computing power and appropriate algorithms had led to the use of various approximations. The two greatest advantages to the actuary of the Bayesian approach are that the method is independent of the model...

Five years ago the world lost one of its most prolific insurance scholars, Dr. Robert I. Mehr. His death in 1988 signalled the passing of not only a gifted writer and researcher, but also a pioneering teacher, mentor, and friend. The essays compiled within this volume are intended as an appropriate tribute to this occasionally outrageous individual who touched the lives of so many within the insurance community. Bob Mehr was a teacher who expected and demanded nothing less than perfect scholarship and flawless, efficient writing. Among alumni of the University of lllinois insurance doctoral...

Multithreaded computer architecture has emerged as one of the most promising and exciting avenues for the exploitation of parallelism. This new field represents the confluence of several independent research directions which have united over a common set of issues and techniques. Multithreading draws on recent advances in dataflow, RISC, compiling for fine-grained parallel execution, and dynamic resource management. It offers the hope of dramatic performance increases through parallel execution for a broad spectrum of significant applications based on extensions to traditional' approaches....