Observing and assessing children's digital play in eary childhood settings

In early childhood education children increasingly have access to digital technologies to play on and with. Research often centers on using traditional play theories to understand what is occurring, but some theorists are now using a social-cultural lens to explore digital play in a way that is meaningful for the children and educators involved. In this paper we present a new conceptual framework to understand how children learn to use technologies through play. The framework is called the Digital Play Framework and is informed by the sociocultural concept of tool mediation (1997) and Hutt’s (1966) ideas about explorative and ludic play. The framework is pedagogically useful because it explains the relationship between technology-as-tool and children’s play-based behaviours. It is important to understand this relationship in early childhood because play is the basis for curriculum provision. With play as the basis for curriculum provision, educators need a way to assess and plan for children’s digital activities. In this paper we illustrate the potential of the Digital Play Framework for achieving this goal

Practical Broad-Band Tuning of Dye Lasers by Solvent Shifting

We have operated a dye laser over a broad wavelength range (593.8-667.0nm) by shifting the dye emission profile with incremental changes of solvent composition. This was accomplished with the laser operating continuously, and only minor adjustment of the laser optics was required. Solvent tuning was facilitated by the critical dependence of the optimum laser wavelength on concentration of the second solvent. Using the known solvent-sensitive laser dye 9-diethylaminobenzo[a]phenoxaz-5-one (DBP), 87% of the tuning range from pure xylenes to pure methanol was covered by cumulative addition of 24 vol. % methanol to the starting xylenes solution. The optimum dye concentration was found to be independent of solvent composition, so that maximum laser power could be maintained by mixing equimolar dye solutions in the two solvents. These results establish the practicality of solvent-tuning as a method of conducting laser experiments over a broad wavelength range

Motivations for Underreporting Suspected Concussion in College Athletics

Student-athletes often fail to report concussion signs and symptoms, thereby putting themselves at risk for delayed recovery and permanent impairment. The present study examined motivations for underreporting concussion symptoms among college athletes enrolled at an NCAA Division I university. One hundred and ninety-three student-athletes in high-risk sports completed a multiple-choice survey related to self-reporting of suspected concussion symptoms and reporting of teammates’ symptoms. Results indicated that 45% of participants did not report their own suspected concussions during the present season and 50% did not report suspected concussions in teammates. Responses revealed that the primary reason for underreporting a suspected concussion was the belief that the blow to the head was not serious enough. Suggestions are provided for athletes, athletic staff, and coaches to improve players’ awareness of the signs, symptoms, and consequences of concussions, as well as how to report suspected concussions appropriately

Aesthetics, Authority and the Outlaw of the Street

This is a paper about the meanings of aesthetics, authority, street art, and graffiti. It is about the potential that graffiti has to disrupt the codes that emanate from the post-industrial, capitalist city, and the ways in which law making authorities have attempted to curb that potential. The regulation of public space involves control over the visual appearance of that space. The Graffiti Prevention Act (Vic) 2007 is one instrument employed in regulating the aesthetics of space. The legislation defines street art as illegal and imposes harsh penalties for the creators of this form of public art. As Margaret Davies writes in Asking the Law Question, the illegality of an act cannot be seen at face value – it is only after we see the act through the filter of the law that it is seen as criminal. I use this as a starting point in asking why graffiti is a criminal act

Knowledge as Leadership, Belonging as Community: How Canadian Community Foundations Are Using Vital Signs for Social Change

The concept of “community” in community foundations is being reframed – less strictly tied to the specific locales that originally defined their boundaries and increasingly about a process of engagement and a resulting sense of belonging. The greatest asset of a community foundation is not the size of its endowment, but its knowledge of community and ability to use this knowledge for positive change. This article explores the Canadian network of community foundations’ use of the reporting tool Vital Signs to implement a knowledge-driven approach to leadership and how it is using this knowledge in more inclusive, engaged models of community to drive change agendas in their own communities and, collectively, at a national scale. In implementing knowledge as a leadership tool, there remains a vast difference between what is feasible for the large community foundations and the small and new ones, particularly those in more isolated places. In spite of these constraints, community knowledge can become a means of scaling attention to particular issues and give many community foundations the confidence to frame issues in new ways

Revitalization of Stillwater Santa Fe Railroad Depot

Housing, Design, and Consumer Resource

A placebo-controlled trial of folic acid and betaine in identical twins with Angelman syndrome.

BackgroundAngelman syndrome (AS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is caused by maternal genetic deficiency of a gene that encodes E6-AP ubiquitin-protein ligase (gene symbol UBE3A) mapping to chromosome 15q11-q13. AS leads to stiff and jerky gait, excess laughter, seizures, and severe intellectual disability. In some parts of the brain, the paternally inherited UBE3A gene is subject to genomic imprinting by the action of the UBE3A-antisense transcript (UBE3A-ATS) on the paternally inherited allele. Consequently, only the maternally inherited UBE3A gene is expressed in mature neurons. AS occurs due to deletions of the maternal 15q11 - 13 region, paternal uniparental disomy (UPD), imprinting center defects, mutations in the maternal UBE3A gene, or other unknown genetic malfunctions that result in a silenced maternal UBE3A gene in the specific imprinted regions of the brain.ResultsA potential treatment strategy for AS is to increase methylation of UBE3A-ATS to promote expression of the paternal UBE3A gene and thus ameliorate the clinical phenotypes of AS. We treated two sets of male identical twins with class I deletions with a 1 year treatment trial of either betaine and folic acid versus placebo. We found no statistically significant changes in the clinical parameters tested at the end of the 1 year trial, nor did we find any significant adverse events.ConclusionsThis study tested the hypothesis that by increasing the methylation of the UBE3A-antisense transcript in Angelman syndrome to promote expression of the silenced paternal UBE3A gene we may ameliorate the clinical phenotypes of AS. We treated two sets of identical twins with placebo versus betaine and folic acid. Although this study represented a novel approach to treating Angelman syndrome, the differences in the developmental testing results was not significant. This paper also discusses the value of monozygotic twin studies in minimizing confounding variables and its utility in conducting small treatment studies.Trial registrationNCT00348933 . Registered 6 July 2006

Extending xpath to support linguistic queries

Linguistic research and language technology development employ large repositories of ordered trees. XML, a standard ordered tree model, and XPath, its associated language, are natural choices for linguistic data storage and queries. However, several important expressive features required for linguistic queries are missing in XPath. In this paper, we motivate and illustrate these features with a variety of linguistic queries. Then we define extensions to XPath which support linguistic tree queries, and describe an efficient query engine based on a novel labeling scheme. Experiments demonstrate that our language is not only sufficiently expressive for linguistic trees but also efficient for practical usage. 1

Ferrocenyl Chalcone Derivatives as Possible Antimicrobial Agents

The swift spread of infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), has quickly become a worldwide concern as infections spread from healthcare settings to the wider community. While ferrocenyl chalcones, which are chalcone derivatives with antimicrobial activity, have gained attention from researchers, further study is needed to assess their cytotoxicity. Ten newly developed chalcones, in which ring A was replaced with a ferrocenyl moiety and ring B contained increasing alkyl chain lengths from 1 to 10 carbons, were assessed. Using twofold broth microdilution, the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of five of the ten compounds were lower against Gram-positive organisms (MICs from 0.008 mg ml−1 to 0.063 mg ml−1) than Gram-negative organisms (MICs = 0.125 mg ml−1). These novel ferrocenyl chalcone compounds were effective against three types of clinically isolated drug-resistant S. aureus, including an MRSA, and against other non-resistant clinically isolated and laboratory-adapted Gram-positive bacteria. The same compounds inhibited growth in non-resistant bacteria by potentially obstructing cellular respiration in Gram-positive bacteria. Images obtained through scanning electron microscopy revealed fully lysed bacterial cells once exposed to a selected compound that showed activity. The results indicate that these newly developed compounds could be important antimicrobial agents in the treatment of infections from clinically resistant bacteria