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This study examined graduate student attitudes towards letter and pass/fail grading systems in the Law School and the School of Education in a selective university in the United States. Fifty-four students completed a questionnaire on goal orientations (ability comparison vs. mastery), amount of effort and stress in each of the two grading environments. Students reported higher orientation towards ability comparison and higher levels of effort and stress in letter-graded classes. Gender, school, and mastery orientation differences were not significant. (Contains 4 tables.)

This applied paper is a report of a naturalistic observation in a mathematics classroom focusing on two second-graders. Following an exploratory visit to understand the setting and develop more specific questions for the study, the purpose of this empirical investigation was to describe the behavior of two children in the particular classroom setting. The two children expressed different patterns of reactions while working on individual activities and in whole class instruction. Field notes on the students' behavior and the classroom environment were collected during visits. Evidence on the strategies the two children used was also recorded. Accounts from the collected observations are briefly presented and interpreted. Conclusions are drawn and further questions are raised. (Contains 2 figures.)

We propose a novel method for quantifying and correcting phase errors in interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) data associated with signal decorrelation. This proposed method relates the observed phase nonclosure (referred to as the closure phase) of triplet combinations of any three individual SAR scenes to the decorrelative phase signal in individual interferograms (pairs of SAR scenes). A singular value decomposition (SVD) method is applied to solve the minimum-norm least-squares best fitting estimate of the decorrelation phase for any arbitrary collection of SAR images. This decorrelative phase is then removed from individual interferograms; these corrected interferograms can then be used with existing InSAR time-series analysis algorithms. We demonstrate this method on the Advanced Land Observation Satellite Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (ALOS PALSAR) scenes of a groundwater pumping subsidence feature in the Central Valley of California and briefly discuss potential future applications of this algorithm to study a variety of environmental and surface physical processes that contribute to InSAR signal decorrelation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]