Making Seatwork Work

Seatwork is an activity which has very few supporters but which is a part of every school day in almost every elementary classroom. In elementary classrooms, most of the seatwork is done during the reading/language time and often occupies two-thirds of the allocated time (Allington and McGill-Franzen, 1989; Rosenshine, 1979). Seatwork serves an important management function in that it allows teachers to focus their attention on groups or individual children with varying needs and abilities. Seatwork is also supposed to provide children with some of the practice needed to become better readers and writers

If They Talk When You Say Listen! And Won\u27t Talk When You Say Discuss! Read!

Speaking and listening, it appears, are elusive to many classroom teachers. There are no textbooks or teachers\u27 guides. The many experts, who exhort teachers to include them, either don\u27t tell how or suggest some isolated activities which at best fill up rainy afternoons

Put Your Two Bottom Readers in Your Top Reading Group

This year I have been working in three high schools attempting to help the teachers of low level English classes teach their basic students reading and writing skills. In classroom after classroom, I find ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders reading at third, fourth, and fifth grade levels. How can it happen? the English teachers ask me. How can they get here? And after all those years of reading instruction in the elementary and middle grades, if they haven\u27t learned to read any better by now, what can I possibly do about it

Supplying the Missing Links from Consonant Substitution to Real Reading

Consonant substitution exercises are a common sight in most primary classrooms

Let Them Read the Book

It is a September morning in a first grade classroom in Anywhere, USA. The boys and girls come into the room, excited and eager. This is the day, their teacher has announced, when they will begin their first book. For several weeks now the boys and girls have been in readiness. They have learned letter names and beginning associations for consonant letters and their sounds. They have learned that reading goes from left to right and top to bottom. They have matched letters and words. They are now ready to read

Profssional Concerns

Professional Concerns is a regular column devoted to the interchange of ideas among those interested in reading instruction. Send your comments and contributions to the editor. If you have questions about reading that you wish to have answered, the editor will find respondents to answer them. Address correspondence to R. Baird Shuman, Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, 61801

Quantitative changes in intracellular calcium and extracellular-regulated kinase activation measured in parallel in CHO cells stably expressing serotonin (5-HT) 5-HT2A or 5-HT2C receptors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The serotonin (5-HT) 2A and 2C receptors (5-HT_2AR and 5-HT_2CR) are involved in a wide range of physiological and behavioral processes in the mammalian central and peripheral nervous systems. These receptors share a high degree of homology, have overlapping pharmacological profiles, and utilize many of the same and richly diverse second messenger signaling systems. We have developed quantitative assays for cells stably expressing these two receptors involving minimal cell sample manipulations that dramatically improve parallel assessments of two signaling responses: intracellular calcium (<it>Ca_i</it>⁺⁺) changes and activation (phosphorylation) of downstream kinases. Such profiles are needed to begin to understand the simultaneous contributions from the multiplicity of signaling cascades likely to be initiated by serotonergic ligands.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We optimized the <it>Ca_i</it>⁺⁺assay for stable cell lines expressing either 5-HT_2AR or 5-HT_2CR (including dye use and measurement parameters; cell density and serum requirements). We adapted a quantitative 96-well plate immunoassay for pERK in the same cell lines. Similar cell density optima and time courses were observed for 5-HT_2AR- and 5-HT_2CR-expressing cells in generating both types of signaling. Both cell lines also require serum-free preincubation for maximal agonist responses in the pERK assay. However, 5-HT_2AR-expressing cells showed significant release of <it>Ca_i</it>⁺⁺in response to 5-HT stimulation even when preincubated in serum-replete medium, while the response was completely eliminated by serum in 5-HT_2CR-expressing cells. Response to another serotonergic ligand (DOI) was eliminated by serum-replete preincubation in both cells lines.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These data expand our knowledge of differences in ligand-stimulated signaling cascades between 5-HT_2AR and 5-HT_2CR. Our parallel assays can be applied to other cell and receptor systems for monitoring and dissecting concurrent signaling responses.</p

Dysregulation of endothelial cell connexin-43 localisation in response to doxorubicin

Introduction: Anthracyclines, such as doxorubicin, remain an important class of chemotherapeutic agent however their efficacy in treating cancer is limited by a cumulative dose-dependent cardiotoxicity. Whilst most studies have focused on cardiomyocyte impairment, circulating doxorubicin has been shown to impact human microvascular responses to doxorubicin in coronary vessels.1 Studies show increased endothelial cell permeability resulting in increased paracellular permeability due to damage to the integrity of cell-cell junctions.2 Strategies to maintain vessel integrity and prevent endothelial cell dysregulation could represent a novel therapeutic opportunity to limit the toxic effects of doxorubicin. The aim of this project was to assess the impact of doxorubicin upon endothelial gap junction proteins, in particular connexin-43 (Cx43)

Open Data Privacy

Cities today collect and store a wide range of data that may contain sensitive information about residents. As cities embrace open data initiatives, more of this information is released to the public. While opening data has many important benefits, sharing data comes with inherent risks to individual privacy: released data can reveal information about individuals that would otherwise not be public knowledge. The goal of this document is to take a first step toward codifying responsible privacy-protective approaches and processes that could be adopted by cities and other groups that are publicly releasing data