Issues in Roma Education: The Relationship Between Language and the Educational Needs of Roma Students

Roma students in the UK are reported as having significantly lower levels of educational attainment than their UK peers (DfE 2014). Existing research has attributed this to the multifaceted barriers Roma students face as an intrinsic part of their educational trajectory in the UK. Language as a barrier to educational engagement for Roma young people and, subsequently, their differentiated educational needs are repeated as key barriers across much of this research. This article seeks to explore the outcomes of the interrelation between these two significant barriers to educational engagement as a prerequisite to exploring strategies to improve educational outcomes for Roma students in the UK

Dual isotopic composition of methane in Murchison meteorite

Dual isotopic composition (H and C) of methane extracted from a small sample of Murchison meteorite reveals a deuterium enrichment for this molecule, indicating the presence of interstellar hydrogen

Laser ablation of Diamond and Genesis concentrator target material

UV laser ablations of CVD diamond using two wavelengths of radiation (266 nm and 213 nm) have been compared. The impetus for this work is the 2004 return of Genesis and extraction of solar-wind oxygen implanted in diamond

Interaction design issues for car navigation systems

We describe a study on the interaction design of in-car navigation systems. It focused on a commercial product. Critical incident analysis was performed based on natural use of the system by a usability analyst. A cognitive walkthrough was then performed based on actual scenarios from the natural use. This is a non-classic application of cognitive walkthrough. It allowed anecdotal critical incidents to be theoretically grounded. We draw conclusions about the interaction design of car navigation systems

Infertility problems and mental health symptoms in a community-based sample: depressive symptoms among infertile men, but not women

Most researchers agree that men’s and women’s experiences of infertility are fundamentally different, and impacts upon the nature of psychological distress encountered. However, design flaws, including non-random samples unrepresentative of the general population, compromise many existing studies. Data derived from a random general community sample provides prevalence of current infertility, and permits examination of longitudinal associations between mental health symptoms and infertility among 1,978 participants aged 28-32 years. In the previous 12-months, infertility was experienced by 2.1% and 5.4% partnered men and women. Infertility independently predicted depressive symptomatology in men, and anxiety symptoms among women. Gender differences were sustained, even controlling for prior depression and anxiety. Health professionals are encouraged to proactively enquire about affective symptoms experienced by both women and men with infertility problems

Phylogenetic studies of Tribe Cacteae (Cactaceae) with special emphasis on the genus Mammillaria

The genus Mammillaria is probably the most species-rich genus in the cactus family. To date, there have been a number of infrageneric classifications of the genus, based largely on morphological data. This study utilized molecular (DNA) sequence data from two chloroplast markers (rpl16 intron and the psbA- trnH intergenic spacer) as part of a cladistic study of the genus. However, in order to allow the choice of a suitable outgroup for Mammillaria an initial study used sequence data from the rpl16 intron to investigate phylogenetic relationships in Tribe Cacteae (to which Mammillaria belongs). The result of that study revealed numerous insights into generic relationships within Tribe Cacteae, for example, demonstrating that the tribe is monophyletic in origin and that a lineage containing Aztekium and Geohintonia forms the earliest lineage in the tribe. This study also revealed that members of tribe Cacteae that possess, tuberculate stems, and dimorphic areoles (with the exception of Ariocarpus) form a well-supported clade that includes Mammillaria, Mammilloydia, Coryphantha, Escobaria, Pelecyphora, Neolloydia and Ortegocactus. Furthermore, members of Ferocactus and Stenocactus represent the most suitable outgroups for a study of Mammillaria.;The phylogenetic study using parsimony and Bayesian analyses of Mammillaria yielded a relatively poorly supported cladogram. In spite of this a number of conclusions could be drawn. It appears unlikely that Mammillaria is monophyletic due to the inclusion of Mammilloydia within a \u27core\u27 group of Mammillaria species. Members of Mammillaria from western mainland Mexico, the south-western regions of the USA, and Baja California have a possible close evolutionary relationship with the genera Ortegocactus, Neolloydia, Pelecyphora, Coryphantha and Escobaria. It was also discovered that a small group of Mammillaria species from north Central Mexico have lost the entire rpl16 intron. Such intron deletions are considered extremely rare and thus indicate that members of this group of Mammillaria species form a single clade, and are more closely related than to each other than they are to other species of Mammillaria