Armenian teachers’ dichotomous perspectives on children with high-functioning autism

This article uses the views of student teachers and serving teachers from a post-Soviet context in order to better understand current thinking around teachers’ perceptions of children with what might be termed ‘hidden’ disabilities. Drawing on social comparison theory, and adopting a phenomenographical approach, the study explores teachers’ perspectives of autism in the Republic of Armenia, offering an insight into the impact of its social, cultural and political history. Whilst serving teachers demonstrated contrastive and downward comparisons when presented with a vignette of a young person with Asperger’s Syndrome, student teachers expressed more connective comparisons. The data suggest, then, that Armenian student teachers represent progressive attitudinal change towards individuals with disabilities. These results also shed light on how social comparison theory might be used to tease out assumptions and taken-for-granted attitudes in the global West

Role of occupational therapy in reducing and managing violence among mental health inpatients:a scoping review protocol

INTRODUCTION: Violence is pervasive among psychiatric inpatients and has profound consequences for its victims, its perpetrators and mental health services. Currently, the unique contribution of occupational therapists to reducing and managing violence among this patient group has not been systematically explored. However, an a priori model which provides an initial understanding of its role in this respect can be identified from the wider scholarly literature. This scoping review aims to apply and refine this model, thereby producing an amended version that will form the basis for further research. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This scoping review is based upon guidance from the Joanna Briggs Institute, Levac, Colquhoun and O’Brien’s scoping review framework, and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Scoping Review checklist. Electronic databases (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) Plus, PsycINFO, Medline, PsycARTICLES, ProQuest Health and Medicine, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED) and Google Scholar) and grey literature will be searched to identify relevant papers. Included articles will apply occupational therapy theory or occupational science to the reduction or management of violence among psychiatric inpatients and will be critically appraised by two independent reviewers. Study characteristics will be presented using frequency counts, and qualitative data will be analysed using ‘best-fit’ framework synthesis and secondary thematic analysis to produce an overall model of occupational therapy’s contribution to violence management and reduction. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Results will be disseminated through a peer-reviewed academic journal and via professional conferences. The review will collect secondary data and therefore will not require ethical approval

Counterion Condensation on Spheres in the Salt-free Limit

A highly-charged spherical colloid in a salt-free environment exerts such a powerful attraction on its counterions that a certain fraction condenses onto the surface of a particle. The degree of condensation depends on the curvature of the surface. So, for instance, condensation is triggered on a highly-charged sphere only if the radius exceeds a certain critical radius \collrad^{*}. \collrad^{*} is expected to be a simple function of the volume fraction of particles. To test these predictions, we prepare spherical particles which contain a covalently-bound ionic liquid, which is engineered to dissociate efficiently in a low-dielectric medium. By varying the proportion of ionic liquid to monomer we synthesise nonpolar dispersions of highly-charged spheres which contain essentially no free co-ions. The only ions in the system are counterions generated by the dissociation of surface-bound groups. We study the electrophoretic mobility of this salt-free system as a function of the colloid volume fraction, the particle radius, and the bare charge density and find evidence for extensive counterion condensation. At low electric fields, we observe excellent agreement with Poisson-Boltzmann predictions for counterion condensation on spheres. At high electric fields however, where ion advection is dominant, the electrophoretic mobility is enhanced significantly which we attribute to hydrodynamic stripping of the condensed layer of counterions from the surface of the particle.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures and two table

Lexical Parameters, Based on Corpus Analysis of English and Swedish Cancer Data, of Relevance for NLG

Proceedings of the 16th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics NODALIDA-2007. Editors: Joakim Nivre, Heiki-Jaan Kaalep, Kadri Muischnek and Mare Koit. University of Tartu, Tartu, 2007. ISBN 978-9985-4-0513-0 (online) ISBN 978-9985-4-0514-7 (CD-ROM) pp. 333-336

Towards an Authorization Framework for App Security Checking

Abstract. Apps don’t come with any guarantees that they are not ma-licious. This paper introduces a PhD project designing the authorization framework used for App Guarden. App Guarden is a new project that uses a flexible assurance framework based on distribution of evidence, attestation and checking algorithms to make explicit why an app isn’t dangerous and to allow users to describe how they want apps on their devices to behave. We use the SecPAL policy language to implement a device policy and give a brief example of a policy being used. Finally we use SecPAL to describe some of the differences between current app markets.

Medical and dental characteristics of children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome at the Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne

Background: Chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) is a multifaceted syndrome with a variable phenotype. Few studies have described the associated dental characteristics and their relationship with medical co-morbidities; and no Australian data exist. Aim: To determine the clinical manifestations and correlations between oral and medical conditions in children with 22q11.2DS. Design: A retrospective observational study. Children genetically diagnosed with 22q11.2DS at the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne were selected; their medical and dental characteristics were collated and analysed. Results: The study population (n = 57; mean age 11.5 years, range 2-27 years) experienced a range of medical conditions involving multiple medical systems; of whom 44 (77.2%) had caries experience, 7 (12.3%) developmentally missing teeth, and 31 (54.4%) developmental defects of enamel (DDE). Smaller proportions of primary teeth were affected by DDE in children with congenital heart disease (2.2% vs 9.7%; P = .02), and cardiac surgery (0.2% vs 9%; P = .001). Conversely, children with hypoparathyroidism (n = 2) had significantly higher proportions of primary teeth affected by DDE (27.5% vs 4%; P = .02). Conclusions: Significant associations existed between medical conditions (congenital heart disease, history of cardiac surgery, and hypoparathyroidism) and primary dentition DDE in children with 22q11.2 DS