When assessing student work, graders will often find that some students will leave one or more problems blank on assessments. Since there is no work shown, the grader has no means to evaluate the student's understanding of a particular problem, and thus awards zero points. This practice punishes the student behavior of leaving a problem blank, but this zero is not necessarily an accurate assessment of student understanding of a particular topic. While some might argue that this grading practice is "fair" in that students know that they can't receive points for answers they don't submit, we share evidence that different student groups engage in blank-leaving behavior at different rates and are therefore unequally impacted. We analyze 10 years of UC Davis introductory physics course databases to show that different groups of students skip problems and entire exams at different rates. We also share some implications for grading practices.

Introduction This manuscript is intended to set the stage for the OTC General Session Panel discussion entitled " When Failure is not an Option: Managing Megaprojects in the Current Environment??, scheduled for Thursday, May 7, 2009. Members of this panel session are as follows:Richard Westney, Chairman, Westney Consulting Group (Panel Moderator)Joel Fort, General Manager, Yemen LNGJames Lucas, President & CEO, Luman InternationalLuc J. Messier, Senior Vice President - Project Development and Procurement, ConocoPhillipsDon Vardeman, Vice President -Worldwide Projects, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation Summary Megaprojects can be defined as projects that are so large that the conventional body of project and risk management knowledge is insufficient to ensure success. Given that significant overruns and delays on megaprojects are almost the norm, it appears that no one really has all the answers to meeting the special challenges of these huge projects. Failure is not an option for most megaprojects. The level of investment, the magnitude of the cashflows involved, and the organizational commitment required are such that the impact of bad outcomes can be devastating to the operator, partners and host countries involved. Megaprojects create challenges that, although now fairly typical, have not typically been addressed in the past. Given the relatively small number of past megaprojects, and their long duration, many executives and practitioners have limited or no experience with them - and the experience of those that do is often not the sort that one would wish to repeat. New approaches are needed, many have been tried, and a new body of knowledge is emerging for these very large projects. The panel is made up of people who are very experienced in megaprojects, representing the executive and project manager points of view, the owner and contractor points of view, as well as the independent perspective of consultants. Rather than focus on success stories, the panel will focus on the most difficult / challenging / intractable aspects of megaprojects and, with extensive audience participation, discuss what has worked, what has not, and what is needed going forward in the current energy and economic environment. Participants will take away an improved understanding that will assist in their planning and decision-making.

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Search for a topic which would be of genuine interest to elevenand twelve-year-old boys and girls, and which would, moreover, open to them a broader view of some of today's work in the world, led to the selection of the subject "Ships and Shipbuilding ." The purpose of this article is to sketch the development of the topic as worked out with a group of sixth-grade children. The children's own experiences with boats or ships of any kind were utilized to introduce the topic. These stories were told orally to the class. The variety of experiences was surprising, and interest increased steadily as the stories multiplied. Use of the suspense element in interesting others and clever selection of titles were two of the several good points discovered by the children in the following accounts. A VESSEL IN DISTRESS One evening at dusk, on our way home from Europe, the look-out reported that he had seen sky rockets in the distance signifying distress. According to the rules of the sea, the captain was compelled to find out the trouble and, if necessary, send help. He changed the course of his vessel toward the skyrockets. After two hours we sighted the vessel. The captain of our ship tried to speak to the vessel through a megaphone, but they failed to hear us on account of the severe storm which had been raging for two days. Six men then volunteered to go over to them in a lifeboat. The sea was so rough that it took them over half an hour to lower the boat. It was now dark and very soon the little boat was out of sight. For two hours we waited. Their return was greeted by cheers from the passengers. After being taken aboard, they reported that the vessel was a tramp steamer bound for Holland with a cargo of oil from South America. She had lost her propeller and wished to be towed. As we were going in the opposite direction, they had to wait for another vessel. A NEW KIND OF SAILBOAT When my father was a little boy, he always spent the winter in New Orleans and the summer in Kentucky. One autumn when the family were going up the Mississippi River, a very funny thing happened. Father was on the top deck looking up the river when, all of a sudden, he heard a scream from