The effects of mini-conferencing prior to IEP meetings on parental involvement in the IEP process

This study sought to extend the literature on parent participation in the Individual Education Plan (IEP) process by implementing an intervention aimed at fostering parent participation in IEP meetings and comparing its results to those obtained using one school district’s standard IEP meeting procedures. This study also sought to determine the effects of SES and disability on parent participation in IEP meetings. Specifically, a mini-conference between parent(s) and special education teachers prior to the IEP meeting informed parents of their child’s competencies and allowed for collaboration on a proposed IEP. A control group of parents was exposed to routine procedures involving no conference. The effectiveness of the mini-conference compared to no mini-conference was determined. Differences on dependent measures according to disability as well as SES were determined. Dependent measures included a researcher’s coding form designed to allow the investigator to numerically document the amount of parental input in IEP meetings and questionnaires completed by both parents and professionals at the conclusion of the IEP meeting. The questionnaires were intended to solicit parent, teacher, and administrator perceptions of parental comfort and participation in the IEP process. For parents who received the mini-conference, questionnaires were used to determine whether parents, teachers, and administrators felt the mini-conference was helpful in preparing the parents for the IEP meeting. Fifteen special educators participated in the study. The return rate of parent consents was 41.9%. No differences were found in either parent or administrator survey responses to items relating to parent comfort or satisfaction with meeting outcome between the experimental and control groups. However, differences were present for the teachers on the same survey measures. Parent education level was correlated with parent participation in the IEP meetings. Parent participation was no different depending on the percentage of the school day a student received special education services. There was no difference in parent participation by conference group, as measured by number of unsolicited parental contributions. However, parents, teachers, and administrators all responded that the mini-conference was helpful in preparing for the IEP meeting, would be beneficial before all IEP meetings, and increased parental participation

The impact and outcomes of the implementation of the Wakefield Birth Centre

In today’s western society childbirth takes place mainly in hospital settings and is under the control of doctors (Kirkham, 2003). More recently there have been concerns about increasingly high caesarean section rates (ref), the decreasing number of practising midwives (Ball et al. 2002) and the worryingly small number of women experiencing a natural birth (Page, 2003). Maternity services at The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust provide for a social, cultural and ethnically diverse community and manage 3,600 births per year. Following reconfiguration in February 2002, including the relocation of hospital maternity services, the trust decided to implement some of the Department of Health’s Action Plan and open a standalone Birth Centre in Wakefield. Birth centres are facilities that provide individualised and family centred maternity care, with an emphasis on skilled, sensitive and respectful midwifery care. They provide a relaxed and informal environment where women are encouraged to labour at their own pace. Birth Centres seek to promote physiological childbirth by recognising, respecting and safeguarding normal birth processes. This philosophy enables women and their families to experience a positive start to parenthood (Shallow, 2001, Kirkham, 2003). Midwives are also able to practise “real midwifery” (Kirkham, 2003, p.14). The overall aim of this research was therefore to evaluate the impact and outcomes of the implementation of the Wakefield Birth Centre. The research was funded by the Centre for Health and Social Care Research (CHSCR) at the University of Huddersfield. Ethical advice was sought through School Research and Ethics Panel (SREP) at the university of Huddersfield and ethical approval was granted by the Local Research Ethics Committee (LREC) and the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust Research and Development

On the dynamics of mechanical failures in magnetized neutron-star crusts

We consider the dynamics of a mechanical failure induced by a shear stress in a strongly magnetized neutron-star crust. We show that even if the elastic properties of the crust allow the creation of a shear crack, the strongly sheared magnetic field around the crack leads to a back-reaction from the Lorentz force which does not allow large relative displacement of the crack surfaces. Instead, the global evolution of the crack proceeds on a slow resistive time scale, and is unable to release any substantial mechanical energy. Our calculations demostrate that for {\it some} magnetic-field configurations, the magnetic forces cause, effectively, a plastic deformation of the crust when the resulting elastic shear stress exceeds the critical value for mechanical failure.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure, submitted to MNRA

The Active Nucleus of IC4970: A Nearby Example of Merger-Induced Cold-Gas Accretion

We present results from Chandra X-ray and Spitzer mid-infrared observations of the interacting galaxy pair NGC6872/IC4970 in the Pavo galaxy group and show that the smaller companion galaxy IC4970 hosts a highly obscured active galactic nucleus (AGN). The 0.5-10 keV X-ray luminosity of the nucleus is variable, increasing by a factor 2.9 to 1.7 x 10^{42} erg/s (bright state) on ~100 ks timescales. The X-ray spectrum of the is heavily absorbed (N_H = 3 x 10^{23} cm^{-2}) for power law models with Gamma = 1.5-2.0 and shows a clear 6.4 keV Fe Kalpha line with equivalent width of 144-195 eV. Limits on the diffuse emission in IC4970 from Chandra X-ray data suggest that the available power from Bondi accretion of hot interstellar gas may be an order of magnitude too small to power the AGN. Spitzer images show that 8 micron nonstellar emission is concentrated in the central 1 kpc of IC4970, consistent with high obscuration in this region. The mid-infrared colors of the nucleus are consistent with those expected for a highly obscured AGN. Taken together these data suggest that the nucleus of IC4970 is a Seyfert 2, triggered and fueled by cold material supplied to the central supermassive black hole as a result of the off-axis collision of IC4970 with the cold-gas rich spiral galaxy NGC6872.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, submitted to ApJ, MIR flux conversion error corrected in Table 4, MIR colors and paper text unchange

Measuring category intuitiveness in unconstrained categorization tasks

What makes a category seem natural or intuitive? In this paper, an unsupervised categorization task was employed to examine observer agreement concerning the categorization of nine different stimulus sets. The stimulus sets were designed to capture different intuitions about classification structure. The main empirical index of category intuitiveness was the frequency of the preferred classification, for different stimulus sets. With 169 participants, and a within participants design, with some stimulus sets the most frequent classification was produced over 50 times and with others not more than two or three times. The main empirical finding was that cluster tightness was more important in determining category intuitiveness, than cluster separation. The results were considered in relation to the following models of unsupervised categorization: DIVA, the rational model, the simplicity model, SUSTAIN, an Unsupervised version of the Generalized Context Model (UGCM), and a simple geometric model based on similarity. DIVA, the geometric approach, SUSTAIN, and the UGCM provided good, though not perfect, fits. Overall, the present work highlights several theoretical and practical issues regarding unsupervised categorization and reveals weaknesses in some of the corresponding formal models

Accumulation of muscle ankyrin repeat protein transcript reveals local activation of primary myotube endcompartments during muscle morphogenesis

The characteristic shapes and positions of each individual body muscle are established during the process of muscle morphogenesis in response to patterning information from the surrounding mesenchyme. Throughout muscle morphogenesis, primary myotubes are arranged in small parallel bundles, each myotube spanning the forming muscles from end to end. This unique arrangement potentially assigns a crucial role to primary myotube end regions for muscle morphogenesis. We have cloned muscle ankyrin repeat protein (MARP) as a gene induced in adult rat skeletal muscle by denervation. MARP is the rodent homologue of human C-193 (Chu, W., D.K. Burns, R.A. Swerick, and D.H. Presky. 1995. J. Biol. Chem. 270:10236-10245) and is identical to rat cardiac ankyrin repeat protein. (Zou, Y., S. Evans, J. Chen, H.-C. Kuo, R.P. Harvey, and K.R. Chien. 1997. Development. 124:793-804). In denervated muscle fibers, MARP transcript accumulated in a unique perisynaptic pattern. MARP was also expressed in large blood vessels and in cardiac muscle, where it was further induced by cardiac hypertrophy. During embryonic development, MARP was expressed in forming skeletal muscle. In situ hybridization analysis in mouse embryos revealed that MARP transcript exclusively accumulates at the end regions of primary myotubes during muscle morphogenesis. This closely coincided with the expression of thrombospondin-4 in adjacent prospective tendon mesenchyme, suggesting that these two compartments may constitute a functional unit involved in muscle morphogenesis. Transfection experiments established that MARP protein accumulates in the nucleus and that the levels of both MARP mRNA and protein are controlled by rapid degradation mechanisms characteristic of regulatory early response genes. The results establish the existence of novel regulatory muscle fiber subcompartments associated with muscle morphogenesis and denervation and suggest that MARP may be a crucial nuclear cofactor in local signaling pathways from prospective tendon mesenchyme to forming muscle and from activated muscle interstitial cells to denervated muscle fibers

Could Intelligent Speed Adaptation make overtaking unsafe?

This driving simulator study investigated how mandatory and voluntary ISA might affect a driver's overtaking decisions on rural roads, by presenting drivers with a variety of overtaking scenarios designed to evaluate both the frequency and safety of the manoeuvres. In half the overtaking scenarios, ISA was active and in the remainder ISA was switched off. A rural road was modelled with a number of 2 + 1 road sections, thus allowing drivers a protected overtaking opportunity. The results indicate that drivers became less inclined to initiate an overtaking manoeuvre when the mandatory ISA was active and this was particularly so when the overtaking opportunity was short. In addition to this, when ISA was activated drivers were more likely to have to abandon an overtaking, presumably due to running out of road. They also spent more time in the critical hatched area - a potentially unsafe behaviour. The quality of the overtaking manoeuvre was also affected when mandatory ISA was active, with drivers pulling out and cutting back in more sharply. In contrast, when driving with a voluntary ISA, overtaking behaviour remained mostly unchanged: drivers disengaged the function in approximately 70% of overtaking scenarios. The results of this study suggest that mandatory ISA could affect the safety of overtaking manoeuvres unless coupled with an adaptation period or other driver support functions that support safe overtaking