A review of the design and assessment model of the Skills Challenge Certificate, and its place within the Welsh Baccalaureate

In January 2017, Wavehill, in collaboration with the University College London (UCL) Institute of Education (IOE), was commissioned by Qualifications Wales to undertake a review of the Skills Challenge Certificate (SCC) qualification and its place within the Welsh Baccalaureate (Welsh Bacc). Dr Caroline Daly (Reader in Education, IOE and Honorary Visiting Professor Cardiff University) undertook a detailed analysis of the SCC design by reviewing programme specifications, delivery handbooks, design principles, the administration handbook, the code of practice and Qualifications Wales’ (2016) Review of the implementation of the new Welsh Baccalaureate from September 2015. Dr Caroline Daly is the lead author on the desk-based review of the SCC. The review of documents was supplemented by interviews with key stakeholders, including the authors of the Qualifications Wales’ initial review (2016) of the Welsh Bacc and senior managers at the awarding body, WJEC. These interviews were used for reference to seek clarification about the SCC design and assessment model to inform the ongoing review of the documentation and refine questions for the focus groups. To enrich the evidence base, a programme of fieldwork was developed to sample a number of schools and Further Education (FE) colleges across Wales. The fieldwork engaged with learners and teachers through focus groups (learners) and interviews (teachers). The sample was constructed in discussion with Qualifications Wales and was designed to include the voices of learners and teachers from a variety of centres across Wales that deliver the Welsh Bacc (the methodology is discussed in section 3). The findings from the desk-based review, the learner focus groups and the teacher interviews are brought together in the Conclusions and Recommendations at the end of the report

Eucalyptus largiflorens F. Muell.

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/herbarium_specimens_byname/9502/thumbnail.jp

Eucalyptus largiflorens F. Muell.

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/herbarium_specimens_byname/9502/thumbnail.jp

Predictive Value of the Functional Movement Screen as it Relates to Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury

Introduction: Anterior cruciate ligament injuries occur over 200,000 times annually in the United States alone (Brophy, et al. 2009). This injury strains the healthcare system and affects the players, teams, parents, and the organization they are a part of. There have been, however, clinically researched risk factors that predispose athletes to ACL injury (Gignac, et al. 2015; Laible, et al. 2014). As a result, there is a clinical need for an effective screening tool to identify those athletes at risk for ACL injury. The Functional Movement Screen has been shown to be an effective screening tool for detecting athletes who are at a greater risk for generalized injury, but its predictive value has never been tested for specific injury rates (Kiesel, et al. 2007; Chorba, et al. 2010; Kiesel, et al. 2015; Letafatkar, et al. 2014). Methods: We performed a prospective study on 20 freshman participants who were athletes on a NCAA Division II varsity soccer, basketball, or volleyball team. Results: The results of the study to this point include one men’s soccer athlete with a torn ACL and an FMS score of 19, leading us to believe that no correlation exists between FMS score and incidence of ACL injury at this time. The purpose of this study was to determine if FMS can be an effective tool for predicting risk of ACL injury in athletes

Using airborne LiDAR Survey to explore historic-era archaeological landscapes of Montserrat in the eastern Caribbean

This article describes what appears to be the first archaeological application of airborne LiDAR survey to historic-era landscapes in the Caribbean archipelago, on the island of Montserrat. LiDAR is proving invaluable in extending the reach of traditional pedestrian survey into less favorable areas, such as those covered by dense neotropical forest and by ashfall from the past two decades of active eruptions by the Soufrière Hills volcano, and to sites in localities that are inaccessible on account of volcanic dangers. Emphasis is placed on two aspects of the research: first, the importance of ongoing, real-time interaction between the LiDAR analyst and the archaeological team in the field; and second, the advantages of exploiting the full potential of the three-dimensional LiDAR point cloud data for purposes of the visualization of archaeological sites and features

Preliminary evidence of increased striatal dopamine in a nonhuman primate model of maternal immune activation.

Women exposed to a variety of viral and bacterial infections during pregnancy have an increased risk of giving birth to a child with autism, schizophrenia or other neurodevelopmental disorders. Preclinical maternal immune activation (MIA) models are powerful translational tools to investigate mechanisms underlying epidemiological links between infection during pregnancy and offspring neurodevelopmental disorders. Our previous studies documenting the emergence of aberrant behavior in rhesus monkey offspring born to MIA-treated dams extends the rodent MIA model into a species more closely related to humans. Here we present novel neuroimaging data from these animals to further explore the translational potential of the nonhuman primate MIA model. Nine male MIA-treated offspring and 4 controls from our original cohort underwent in vivo positron emission tomography (PET) scanning at approximately 3.5-years of age using [18F] fluoro-l-m-tyrosine (FMT) to measure presynaptic dopamine levels in the striatum, which are consistently elevated in individuals with schizophrenia. Analysis of [18F]FMT signal in the striatum of these nonhuman primates showed that MIA animals had significantly higher [18F]FMT index of influx compared to control animals. In spite of the modest sample size, this group difference reflects a large effect size (Cohen's d = 0.998). Nonhuman primates born to MIA-treated dams exhibited increased striatal dopamine in late adolescence-a hallmark molecular biomarker of schizophrenia. These results validate the MIA model in a species more closely related to humans and open up new avenues for understanding the neurodevelopmental biology of schizophrenia and other neurodevelopmental disorders associated with prenatal immune challenge

Calicivirus emergence from ocean reservoirs: zoonotic and interspecies movements.

Caliciviral infections in humans, among the most common causes of viral-induced vomiting and diarrhea, are caused by the Norwalk group of small round structured viruses, the Sapporo caliciviruses, and the hepatitis E agent. Human caliciviruses have been resistant to in vitro cultivation, and direct study of their origins and reservoirs outside infected humans or water and foods (such as shellfish contaminated with human sewage) has been difficult. Modes of transmission, other than direct fecal-oral routes, are not well understood. In contrast, animal viruses found in ocean reservoirs, which make up a second calicivirus group, can be cultivated in vitro. These viruses can emerge and infect terrestrial hosts, including humans. This article reviews the history of animal caliciviruses, their eventual recognition as zoonotic agents, and their potential usefulness as a predictive model for noncultivatable human and other animal caliciviruses (e.g., those seen in association with rabbit hemorrhagic disease)

Indeterminacy of Spatiotemporal Cardiac Alternans

Cardiac alternans, a beat-to-beat alternation in action potential duration (at the cellular level) or in ECG morphology (at the whole heart level), is a marker of ventricular fibrillation, a fatal heart rhythm that kills hundreds of thousands of people in the US each year. Investigating cardiac alternans may lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias and eventually better algorithms for the prediction and prevention of such dreadful diseases. In paced cardiac tissue, alternans develops under increasingly shorter pacing period. Existing experimental and theoretical studies adopt the assumption that alternans in homogeneous cardiac tissue is exclusively determined by the pacing period. In contrast, we find that, when calcium-driven alternans develops in cardiac fibers, it may take different spatiotemporal patterns depending on the pacing history. Because there coexist multiple alternans solutions for a given pacing period, the alternans pattern on a fiber becomes unpredictable. Using numerical simulation and theoretical analysis, we show that the coexistence of multiple alternans patterns is induced by the interaction between electrotonic coupling and an instability in calcium cycling.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Thermal studies of L, D and β-alanine

α-Amino acids are generally studied by spectroscopic techniques, to determine their structure and distinguish between L and D forms (Caroline et al., 2009). Their study via thermal analysis is usually combined with other analytical techniques such as FT-IR, MS, HPLC, GC or NMR to identify the products of thermal decomposition (Kumar et al., 2006, Rodante and Marrosu, 1990). It is intriguing to ascertain whether thermal analytical techniques alone can provide useful information about amino acids, in terms of their physicochemical properties, and their techniques ability to distinguish between L and D forms

Evidence of Bordetella pertussis infection in vaccinated 1-year-old Danish children

We measured IgA and IgG antibodies to pertussis toxin (PT) and filamentous hemagglutinin (FHA) in sera from 203 1-year-old children who had received one to three doses of a monocomponent PT toxoid vaccine. Ten children (5%) had IgA antibody to PT indicating recent infection; seven of these children had received three doses of vaccine. PT IgA responders did not have significantly longer coughing episodes than PT IgA non-responders. Since an IgA antibody response occurs in only ∼50% of infected children, the actual infection rate in our cohort is estimated to ∼10%. The apparent high Bordetella pertussis infection rate in Danish infants suggests that the monocomponent PT toxoid vaccine used in Denmark has limited efficacy against B. pertussis infection. A prospective immunization study comparing a multi-component vaccine with the present monocomponent PT toxoid vaccine should be undertaken