A reading project to improve literacy in the foundation phase: A case study in the Eastern Cape

Early literacy teaching and learning in the foundation phase of rural schools in South Africa experience persistent challenges. In order to address some of these challenges, a national reading programme to improve literacy among rural learners was initiated by a non-governmental organisation. The article provides an overview of how teachers in selected Eastern Cape foundation classrooms use the reading programme to enhance literacy of the learners. The objectives of the article are to investigate how the reading project has been incorporated into the teachers’ teaching pedagogy and their perceptions as to how the reading programme has contributed to the school and community. Four purposively selected rural schools, each being part of the reading programme, served as research sites. Participants included eight teachers who used the reading supplement in their classroom. Qualitative data were gathered using semi-structured interviews with the teachers in each school. Through a process of thematic content analysis, the following themes emerged: (1) pedagogical challenges, (2) infrastructure and provisioning for literacy and (3) community engagement. The considerations for future reading programmes in rural areas include cost, availability of resources, training of teachers and practical aspects of the supplement, for example, font size and length of stories. These findings illustrate how the foundation teachers use the reading programme to enhance the literacy curriculum in schools situated in rural settings. The recommendation of the article is that the reading programme is useful and teachers should be encouraged to use the supplement reading activities in the foundation phase

Discretized disorder in planar semiconductor microcavities: Mosaicity effect on resonant Rayleigh scattering and optical parametric oscillation

International audienceThe features of resonant secondary emission by two-dimensional multiple semiconductor microcavities are experimentally investigated. We show that, under normal laser incidence, static disorder determines the final states of the resonant Rayleigh scattering in the high symmetry axes of the GaAs matrix. Scanning transmission electron microscopy reveals a small dislocation density at the layers interfaces and step formation due to strain accumulation and relaxation ruled by the symmetry of the underlying GaAs matrix: this mosaicity effects, a common feature in thick and strained crystals, determines the scattering channels by selecting the crystallographic discretized directions. Moreover, interband optical parametric oscillation of intensity balanced signal and idler beams takes place in the directions selected by the photonic disorder in the distributed Bragg reflector

Parametric generation of twin photons in vertical triple microcavities

We report the realization of a monolithic vertical-cavity, surface emitting micro-optical parametric conversion nanostructure, triply resonant with the parametric frequencies, allowing parametric oscillation with ultra-low pump power threshold. The photonic phase-space naturally provides triple resonance for the parametric frequencies, together with built-in cavity phase-matching for the pump wave at normal incidence. Parametric oscillation is observed in both the strong and weak exciton–photon coupling regime, allowing a high operating temperature. Signal and idler beams can be collected at 0° or at finite angles. The OPO threshold is low enough to envisage the realization of an all-semiconductor electrically-pumped micro-parametric oscillator

Ciliary Neurotrophic Factor Protects Striatal Neurons against Excitotoxicity by Enhancing Glial Glutamate Uptake

Ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) is a potent neuroprotective cytokine in different animal models of glutamate-induced excitotoxicity, although its action mechanisms are still poorly characterized. We tested the hypothesis that an increased function of glial glutamate transporters (GTs) could underlie CNTF-mediated neuroprotection. We show that neuronal loss induced by in vivo striatal injection of the excitotoxin quinolinic acid (QA) was significantly reduced (by ∼75%) in CNTF-treated animals. In striatal slices, acute QA application dramatically inhibited corticostriatal field potentials (FPs), whose recovery was significantly higher in CNTF rats compared to controls (∼40% vs. ∼7%), confirming an enhanced resistance to excitotoxicity. The GT inhibitor dl-threo-β-benzyloxyaspartate greatly reduced FP recovery in CNTF rats, supporting the role of GT in CNTF-mediated neuroprotection. Whole-cell patch-clamp recordings from striatal medium spiny neurons showed no alteration of basic properties of striatal glutamatergic transmission in CNTF animals, but the increased effect of a low-affinity competitive glutamate receptor antagonist (γ-d-glutamylglycine) also suggested an enhanced GT function. These data strongly support our hypothesis that CNTF is neuroprotective via an increased function of glial GTs, and further confirms the therapeutic potential of CNTF for the clinical treatment of progressive neurodegenerative diseases involving glutamate overflow

Believing the unbelievable: the myth of Russians 'with snow on their boots' in the United Kingdom, 1914

PublishedArticle“This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Cultural and Social History on1 May 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/ 10.2752/147800414X13802176314528.”In the opening months of the First World War, a rumour spread across the United Kingdom that Russian soldiers – identified by the ‘snow on their boots’ – had landed in Scotland en route to the Western Front. Despite being relegated to history’s footnotes as a comical but meaningless episode, this article takes the rumour seriously. Unconcerned with questions of ‘truth’ (the rumour was dismissed as fantastical by late October 1914), I will argue that the real value of this story is in what it reveals about British society at the outbreak of war. The rumour emerged as the British Expeditionary Force entered its first big test of the Great War – the battle of Mons – which would result in Germany’s first great victory and resulting in thousands of casualties. As such the rumour can be interpreted as a form of ‘secular apparition’ bringing consolation to many. It was one of the ways ordinary people made sense of their newly threatening world

On Coalition Formation with Heterogeneous Agents

We propose a framework to analyze coalition formation with heterogeneous agents. Existing literature defines stability conditions that do not ensure that, once an agent decides to sign an agreement, the enlarged coalition is feasible. Defining the concepts of refraction and exchanging, we set up conditions of existence and enlargement of a coalition with heterogeneous agents. We use the concept of exchanging agents to give necessary conditions for internal stability and show that refraction is a sufficient condition for the failure of an enlargement of the coalition. With heterogeneous agents we can get a situation where a group of members of an unstable coalition does not deviate, neither within the coalition nor within the extended coalition. Hence, the possibilities of agreement are richer than in the standard analysis with homogeneous agents. Examples of industrial economics are used for illustration, and an application to climate change negotiations is discussed in more detail