Reflections from the Classroom: Towards a Radical Pedagogy for Early Years

This article comprises some critical reflections on the teaching of a second year undergraduate module called Children’s Cultural Worlds in which students are required to engage with original studies which are then used to stimulate self-reflection and engagement with wider issues relating to our understanding of children’s place in the social world. It will be argued that when individual memories are shared, it is possible to identify continuities and discontinuities in childhood experiences as well as the intersections between childhood and other social divisions such as gender, class and ethnicity. The requirement that students recall and reflect on their childhood memories and share them with others is a way of students learning through their own experiences, reflecting on their views and values. Furthermore, as it will be shown, it opens up spaces for alternative values and viewpoints to emerge about how we might ‘regulate’ early childhood because ‘When we tell stories and process them, using reflective dialogues, we create the possibility of change in ourselves and others’.</jats:p

Bernard Vonnegut (1914-1997)

Bernard Vonnegut, a Fellow of AGU, the American Meteorological Society, and the Royal Meteorological Society, died of cancer in Albany, N.Y. on April 25,1997. At 82, he was still an active and innovative scientist serving as both Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the State University of New York, at Albany and Honorary President of the International Commission of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics

Angina at Low heart rate And Risk of imminent Myocardial infarction (the ALARM study): a prospective, observational proof-of-concept study

BACKGROUND: Myocardial infarction (MI) is often preceded by unstable angina. Helping patients identify the onset of unstable angina rather than MI may result in earlier treatment and improve outcomes. Unstable angina is angina occurring at a lower-than-usual workload. Since heart rate (HR) is correlated with degree of exertion, we hypothesised that angina occurring at low HR is a warning signal for unstable angina and MI. METHODS: In this prospective study, 111 patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) or prognostically significant coronary disease were recruited. Each patient’s HR was measured using a portable electrocardiogram (ECG) recorder after regular class III exercise on the Canadian Cardiovascular Society Angina Grading Scale and the cumulative moving average and three-sigma (standard deviation) range were calculated for each new measurement. The HR was subsequently measured at the beginning of angina; a HR lower than the preceding three-sigma ranges for class III or anginal HR was regarded as a ‘warning signal’. The proportion of warning signals associated with ACS occurring in the following 2 weeks was compared with that for non-warning signals. RESULTS: Nine cases of ACS occurred in eight patients. Two cases were preceded by warning signals; a signal marked the onset of ACS in a third patient, and four patients failed to make anginal ECG recordings. There were 591 documented episodes of angina during the study and ECGs were available for 383 (64.8 %) of these of which 55 were warning signals. Of these warning signals, 4 occurred in the 2 weeks preceding ACS, compared with 4 of 328 non-warning signals (odds ratio, 6.4; 95 % confidence interval, 1.5–26.2; p = 0.01; positive predictive value, 7.3 %; negative predictive value, 98.8 %). CONCLUSIONS: Low HR angina may identify unstable angina and serve as an early warning for MI. In addition, angina that does not occur at a low heart rate indicates that ACS is very unlikely

Sally Moore Interview, July 19, 2024

In this interview, Sally Moore discusses meeting and eventually marrying philosopher Henry Bugbee. She talks about first meeting Bugbee when she attended a class he taught at what is now Chatham University. During this period Moore typed his book, The Inward Morning. After no contact for 24 years, Moore reached out to Bugbee. Though the relationship had been platonic, they start a long-distance relationship for the next three years and then are married. She mentions how he taught in Canada, his love of hiking mountains in Missoula, Montana, that he liked to entertain and that they welcomed unannounced visitors to their home. Moore discusses that Bugbee had a difficult childhood with a wealthy family that was not very close. And Moore talks about Bugbee’s Alzheimer’s illness and his eventual death.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/bugbee_interviews/1004/thumbnail.jp

Litigation and Mediation in Thailand

A Review of Code and Custom in a Thai Provincial Court by David M. Enge

Evaluating and improving understanding and use of current UK nutrition labels among older adults

Background: New formats of UK nutrition labels were mandatorily introduced on-pack and for products sold online, from 2014. However, there is a lack of evidence concerning older adults’ understanding and use of this information and the extent to which these may be improved with nutrition label education. With respect to older adults, this research aimed to (1) explore use of this information and potentially related consumer characteristics and (2) evaluate objective understanding of the current UK nutrition labels, before developing and evaluating a pilot education intervention targeting label understanding. Methods: An online survey was developed to evaluate understanding of current UK nutrition labels and their use among older adults aged 50 years or older. Exploration of these adults’ engagement with online nutrition information was also undertaken using “Think aloud sessions”. Following a systematic review of the effect of nutrition label education on consumers’ use and understanding of this information, a single-arm pre post-intervention study design was used to evaluate a pilot educational intervention among community service-users. Results: Frequent use of nutrition labels during purchases was reported by 51% of all survey respondents (n=181) and predicted by increasing levels of personal motivation (OR 1.1, 95% CI 1.1, 1.2), nutrition knowledge (OR 1.3, 95% CI: 1.1, 1.5) as well as self-rated (OR 1.2 95% CI: 1.0, 1.5), but not objective (OR 1.1, 95% CI: 0.9, 1.3), understanding of this information. Respondents had difficulties understanding the meaning of specific elements of the current UK nutrition labels, including “Reference Intakes (RI)” terminology. Infrequent use of online nutrition information could be explained by a variety of factors related to supermarket website use and information presentation. Finally, the developed educational intervention increased levels of participants’ (n = 30) objective understanding of current UK nutrition labels (quiz score out of 5 MD=1.4, 95% CI: -2.1, -0.8), as well as participants’ confidence in their use of this information to make healthier food choices (using a 7-point scale, MD = 1.0, 95% CI: 0.5 to 1.6). Conclusion: Older adults’ understanding of current UK nutrition labels may be improved with nutrition label education. Implications for policy and practice are given. Further research into the impact of education on older adults’ nutrition label understanding, use and dietary intakes is now warranted

Evaluating the Foundation Phase : final report

The Foundation Phase (introduced in 2008) provides a developmentally appropriate experiential curriculum for children aged 3-7 in Wales. The Welsh Government commissioned independent evaluation (led by WISERD) aims to evaluate how well it is being implemented, what impact it has had, and ways in which it can be improved. The three-year evaluation utilises a range of mixed methods at a national and local scale

Detection and initial characterization of a bacteriocin inhibitory to Campylobacter jejuni

Given the current concerns regarding the use of antibiotics and chemical preservatives in animal husbandry, a naturally occurring antimicrobial peptide of bacterial origin (bacteriocin) that exhibits antagonist activity toward foodborne pathogens could provide a favorable alternative to these agents. The goal of this research was to identify one or more bacteriocins that might reduce the incidence of C. jejuni in poultry and poultry products, and thus enhance the safety of food products of poultry origin. Twelve bacteriocin-producing bacteria (producer organisms), which included eight Lactobacillus sp. strains, two Paenibacillus polymyxa strains, a Streptococcus salivarious and a Propionibacterium thoenii, were selected and screened against two wild type strains of C. jejuni (indicator organisms) via agar spot and well diffusion assays. Four organisms inhibited C. jejuni growth and were retained for further evaluation. Through inhibition tests with catalase and four proteases, the inhibitory substances were determined to be proteinaceous. The bacterium Paenibacillus polymyxa (ATCC 842) provided the most consistent inhibitory activity. The antimicrobial molecule produced by P. polymyxa was found to be a protein of molecular weight between 3000 and 5000 D, stable during extended storage at low temperature, stable to heat at 1210C, and optimally produced during incubation at 30-370C for 24 h in the pH range 6.0 to 7.4

Distributed XQuery-based integration and visualization of multimodality data: Application to brain mapping.

This paper addresses the need for relatively small groups of collaborating investigators to integrate distributed and heterogeneous data about the brain. Although various national efforts facilitate large-scale data sharing, these approaches are generally too “heavyweight” for individual or small groups of investigators, with the result that most data sharing among collaborators continues to be ad hoc. Our approach to this problem is to create a “lightweight” distributed query architecture, in which data sources are accessible via web services that accept arbitrary query languages but return XML results. A Distributed XQuery Processor (DXQP) accepts distributed XQueries in which subqueries are shipped to the remote data sources to be executed, with the resulting XML integrated by DXQP. A web-based application called DXBrain accesses DXQP, allowing a user to create, save and execute distributed XQueries, and to view the results in various formats including a 3-D brain visualization. Example results are presented using distributed brain mapping data sources obtained in studies of language organization in the brain, but any other XML source could be included. The advantage of this approach is that it is very easy to add and query a new source, the tradeoff being that the user needs to understand XQuery and the schemata of the underlying sources. For small numbers of known sources this burden is not onerous for a knowledgeable user, leading to the conclusion that the system helps to fill the gap between ad hoc local methods and large scale but complex national data sharing efforts