Do family learning phonics courses improve parents’ reading-related skills and ability to support their children’s reading?

Background: Parents play a crucial role in supporting children’s literacy, especially in the first years of school. However, parents can find this challenging if they struggle with reading themselves. We explore whether family learning phonics courses boost parents’ reading-related skills and ability to support their children’s reading, in a collaboration between UK academics and the National Family Learning Forum. Methods: Prior to data collection, academics and course leaders identified key skills for courses to target: phonological awareness, letter-sounds, segmenting and blending, and awareness of irregular words. Family learning teams recruited parents of Reception children (aged 4-5 years old) for the Phonics group (N = 50), targeting parents who were likely to need literacy support. Parents received six weeks of one- to two-hour phonics sessions in groups. Control participants (N = 76) were recruited online and had a Reception-age child (4-5 years old); controls received no training. All participants completed phonics-related tests at weeks one and six. Results The Phonics group significantly improved on letter-sound knowledge (by 4.64 letters; 51 total items); the Control group did not significantly improve on this measure. Both groups showed some improvement in phonological awareness and word reading (likely due to practice effects), and neither group improved on nonword reading. The reading questionnaire showed that the Phonics group reported giving their children more regular support with literacy activities and placed a higher level of importance on homework, with no increase for the Control group. Conclusions: We provide evidence that family learning phonics courses can improve crucial reading skills (letter-sound knowledge) and increase parents’ confidence to support their children’s reading. Some reading skills (phonological awareness, whole word reading, and decoding) may be slower to change and require longer-term support. Future work should explore long-term consequences of such courses for parents’ and their children’s reading habits and skills

Strategic planning as the intentional production of a “Trading Zone”

For a long period of time there has been a kind of mirroring between the development of decision making models in Political science and the concepts and paradigms used in Planning theory. The dialogue has been interrupted when the "Garbage Can" model was proposed by Choen, March and Olsen in 1972: a model that emphasized the irreducible complexity of the policy processes. The article reconstructs this relationship and its evolution showing the influence of decision-making models on planning theory, and showing the difficulties of managing complexity for planners. The paper holds that interpreting planning processes through the lens of the "Trading zone" concept proposed by Peter Galison in the field of history of science could be an interesting way of dealing with the extreme complexity of contemporary planning problems. The conclusion is that the use of the Trading Zone concept is very promising to solve some dilemmas of planning theory and that it is particularly useful if we employ it in the growing area of strategic spatial planning

Diffuse Gamma Rays: Galactic and Extragalactic Diffuse Emission

"Diffuse" gamma rays consist of several components: truly diffuse emission from the interstellar medium, the extragalactic background, whose origin is not firmly established yet, and the contribution from unresolved and faint Galactic point sources. One approach to unravel these components is to study the diffuse emission from the interstellar medium, which traces the interactions of high energy particles with interstellar gas and radiation fields. Because of its origin such emission is potentially able to reveal much about the sources and propagation of cosmic rays. The extragalactic background, if reliably determined, can be used in cosmological and blazar studies. Studying the derived "average" spectrum of faint Galactic sources may be able to give a clue to the nature of the emitting objects.Comment: 32 pages, 28 figures, kapproc.cls. Chapter to the book "Cosmic Gamma-Ray Sources," to be published by Kluwer ASSL Series, Edited by K. S. Cheng and G. E. Romero. More details can be found at http://www.gamma.mpe-garching.mpg.de/~aws/aws.htm

Behavioural Susceptibility Theory: Professor Jane Wardle and the Role of Appetite in Genetic Risk of Obesity

Purpose of Review: There is considerable variability in human body weight, despite the ubiquity of the 'obesogenic' environment. Human body weight has a strong genetic basis and it has been hypothesised that genetic susceptibility to the environment explains variation in human body weight, with differences in appetite being implicated as the mediating mechanism; so-called 'behavioural susceptibility theory' (BST), first described by Professor Jane Wardle. This review summarises the evidence for the role of appetite as a mediator of genetic risk of obesity. Recent Findings: Variation in appetitive traits is observable from infancy, drives early weight gain and is highly heritable in infancy and childhood. Obesity-related common genetic variants identified through genome-wide association studies show associations with appetitive traits, and appetite mediates part of the observed association between genetic risk and adiposity. Summary: Obesity results from an interaction between genetic susceptibility to overeating and exposure to an 'obesogenic' food environment

Extreme behavioural shifts by baboons exploiting risky, resource-rich, human-modified environments

Abstract A range of species exploit anthropogenic food resources in behaviour known as ‘raiding’. Such behavioural flexibility is considered a central component of a species’ ability to cope with human-induced environmental changes. Here, we study the behavioural processes by which raiding male chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) exploit the opportunities and mitigate the risks presented by raiding in the suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa. Ecological sampling and interviews conducted with ‘rangers’ (employed to manage the baboons’ space use) revealed that baboons are at risk of being herded out of urban spaces that contain high-energy anthropogenic food sources. Baboon-attached motion/GPS tracking collars showed that raiding male baboons spent almost all of their time at the urban edge, engaging in short, high-activity forays into the urban space. Moreover, activity levels were increased where the likelihood of deterrence by rangers was greater. Overall, these raiding baboons display a time-activity balance that is drastically altered in comparison to individuals living in more remote regions. We suggest our methods can be used to obtain precise estimates of management impact for this and other species in conflict with people

'Gain with no pain’: anabolic-androgenic steroids trafficking in the UK

Anabolic-androgenic steroids are performance and image enhancing drugs (PIED) that can improve endurance and athletic performance, reduce body fat and stimulate muscle growth. The use of steroids has been studied extensively in the medical and psychological literature, as well as in the sociology of sport, health and masculinity. From the late 2000s, the worldwide trade in steroids increased significantly. However, trafficking in steroids remains a largely under-researched criminological phenomenon with a few notable exceptions. Currently in the UK there are only small and fragmented pieces of information available relating to steroids trafficking in autobiographical accounts of professional criminals. Drawing on original empirical data, the purpose of this article is to provide an account of the social organization of the steroids trafficking business in the UK. The trade in steroids is decentralized, highly flexible with no hierarchies, and open to anyone willing to either order the merchandise online or travel to producing countries and obtain steroids in bulk from legitimate manufacturers. The patterns of trafficking of this specific type of substance are patently conditioned by its embeddedness in the gym/bodybuilding scene and this greatly affects relations between actors in the business. In the steroids market, one typically encounters a multitude of individuals likely to drift between legality and illegality, online and offline, use and supply

Lessons learned from the AFLY5 RCT process evaluation: Implications for the design of physical activity and nutrition interventions in schools Health behavior, health promotion and society

© 2015 Jago et al. Background: Systematic reviews have highlighted that school-based diet and physical activity (PA) interventions have had limited effects. This study used qualitative methods to examine how the effectiveness of future primary (elementary) school diet and PA interventions could be improved. Methods: Data are from the Active For Life Year 5 (AFLY5) study, which was a cluster randomised trial conducted in 60 UK primary schools. Year 5 (8-9 years of age) pupils in the 30 intervention schools received a 12-month intervention. At the end of the intervention period, interviews were conducted with: 28 Year 5 teachers (including 8 teachers from control schools); 10 Headteachers (6 control); 31 parents (15 control). Focus groups were conducted with 70 year 5 pupils (34 control). Topics included how the AFLY5 intervention could have been improved and how school-based diet and PA interventions should optimally be delivered. All interviews and focus groups were transcribed and thematically analysed across participant groups. Results: Analysis yielded four themes. Child engagement: Data suggested that programme success is likely to be enhanced if children feel that they have a sense of autonomy over their own behaviour and if the activities are practical. School: Finding a project champion within the school would enhance intervention effectiveness. Embedding diet and physical activity content across the curriculum and encouraging teachers to role model good diet and physical activity behaviours were seen as important. Parents and community: Encouraging parents and community members into the school was deemed likely to enhance the connection between schools, families and communities, and "create a buzz" that was likely to enhance behaviour change. Government/Policy: Data suggested that there was a need to adequately resource health promotion activity in schools and to increase the infrastructure to facilitate diet and physical activity knowledge and practice. Discussion and Conclusions: Future primary school diet and PA programmes should find ways to increase child engagement in the programme content, identify programme champions, encourage teachers to work as role models, engage parents and embed diet and PA behaviour change across the curriculum. However, this will require adequate funding and cost-effectiveness will need to be established. Trial registration: ISRCTN5013374

Cluster-randomised trial to evaluate the 'Change for Life' mass media/ social marketing campaign in the UK

Social marketing campaigns offer a promising approach to the prevention of childhood obesity. Change4Life (C4L) is a national obesity prevention campaign in England. It included mass media coverage aiming to reframe obesity into a health issue relevant to all and provided the opportunity for parents to complete a brief questionnaire ('How are the Kids') and receive personalised feedback about their children's eating and activity. Print and online C4L resources were available with guidance about healthy eating and physical activity. The study aims were to examine the impact of personalised feedback and print material from the C4L campaign on parents' attitudes and behaviours about their children's eating and activity in a community-based cluster-randomised controlled trial

Earth's oldest mantle fabrics indicate Eoarchaean subduction

The extension of subduction processes into the Eoarchaean era (4.0-3.6 Ga) is controversial. The oldest reported terrestrial olivine, from two dunite lenses within the ~3,720 Ma Isua supracrustal belt in Greenland, record a shape-preferred orientation of olivine crystals defining a weak foliation and a well-defined lattice-preferred orientation (LPO). [001] parallel to the maximum finite elongation direction and (010) perpendicular to the foliation plane define a B-type LPO. In the modern Earth such fabrics are associated with deformation of mantle rocks in the hanging wall of subduction systems; an interpretation supported by experiments. Here we show that the presence of B-type fabrics in the studied Isua dunites is consistent with a mantle origin and a supra-subduction mantle wedge setting, the latter supported by compositional data from nearby mafic rocks. Our results provide independent microstructural data consistent with the operation of Eoarchaean subduction and indicate that microstructural analyses of ancient ultramafic rocks provide a valuable record of Archaean geodynamics