Making connections with their world: Outdoor provision for under-twos in early childhood settings in Kent

This report is the second stage of a research project, A life ‘in and with nature?’ An exploration of outdoor provision in baby rooms, made possible by funding from the Froebel Trust. The outdoors is central to Froebelian philosophy and practice and, for Froebel, experiences in the earliest period of childhood were particularly significant since the ‘whole being is here only an appropriating eye…’ This research is inspired by his understanding that, ‘Life in and with nature, and with the clear, still objects of nature must be fostered at this time by the parents and members of the family as the chief point of reference of the whole child-life’1 and seeks to explore its significance in contemporary practice. The growing number of very young children in the UK and beyond who now spend time in formal day care suggest that it is important to know more about outdoor provision for under twos

Social dramas and planning judgement

In this article we discuss the situated nature of planning judgement. Rather than focusing on its ethical content we use an ethnographic study of performances present in the hearings into the application to expand the A303, a road running south of Stonehenge, to interpret the connection of planning judge-ment both to the immediate context of the recommendation to withhold consent for a large disruptive infrastructure project in an already contested highly valued historic landscape and the broader context of the responsibilities decisions on road infrastructure have towards future generations

Dimension-adaptive bounds on compressive FLD Classification

Efficient dimensionality reduction by random projections (RP) gains popularity, hence the learning guarantees achievable in RP spaces are of great interest. In finite dimensional setting, it has been shown for the compressive Fisher Linear Discriminant (FLD) classifier that forgood generalisation the required target dimension grows only as the log of the number of classes and is not adversely affected by the number of projected data points. However these bounds depend on the dimensionality d of the original data space. In this paper we give further guarantees that remove d from the bounds under certain conditions of regularity on the data density structure. In particular, if the data density does not fill the ambient space then the error of compressive FLD is independent of the ambient dimension and depends only on a notion of ‘intrinsic dimension'

Housing supply, investment demand and money creation: A comment on the drivers of London’s housing crisis

This commentary examines the current emphasis on supply-side solutions to the housing crisis in England – building more homes to increase accessibility – against a backdrop of intensifying demand-side pressures, the financialisation of housing, and the impact of credit liberalisation and money creation on housing demand and prices. It reflects on the need to balance additional housing supply, where needed, with gradual ‘demand management’ responses that at last acknowledge the centrality of spatially unbounded investment demand and the flow of money created by deregulated banks into housing as fundamental to the current crisis of housing affordability and access

Investigating collocational priming in Turkish

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the link in this record.Several attempts have been made to illustrate the organization of the monolingual mental lexicon and each model proposed so far has highlighted different aspects of lexical processing. What they have in common is the fact that their depictions rely on single lexical items and paradigmatic relations come to the fore in their explanations. Hoey’s lexical priming theory (2005) tries to shed light on the issue of collocational processing in the internal lexicon from a cognitive and psycholinguistic perspective and its importance for our overall creative language production. A number of psycholinguistic studies have tested Hoey's theory as it relates to English, but work in other languages is limited. The present study broadens the scope of work in this area by investigating whether collocational priming also holds for speakers of Turkish. Furthermore, the possible influence of frequency and part of speech on collocational priming is scrutinized by exploring the correlations between response times in the priming experiment and these independent variables. The findings revealed a significant collocational priming effect for Turkish L1 users, in line with Hoey’s claims. The regression analysis indicated frequency and part of speech as important predictors of processing duration. The correlation analysis also showed significant correlations between the response times and both word and collocational frequency. A tentative mental lexicon framework is proposed based on the findings of this research

Adult learners' retention of collocations from exposure

Formulaic language is widely recognized to be of central importance to fluent and idiomatic language use. However, the mechanics of how formulaic language is acquired are not well understood. Some researchers (e.g. Nick Ellis) believe that the chunking inherent in formulaic language drives the language learning process. Others (e.g. Wray) claim that adult second language learners take an essentially non-formulaic approach to language learning, analysing their input into individual words and not retaining information about what words appear together. If the second model is right, it represents a crucial difference between child first and adult second language learning. This 'non-formulaic' model is tested here through a lab-based study of collocation learning. Our findings indicate that, contrary to the model, adult second language learners do retain information about what words appear together in their input. This suggests that any shortfall in non-natives' knowledge of collocational associations between words is due to inadequate input, rather than a non-nativelike approach to learning. The study also examines the effects of different forms of repetition on collocation acquisition and draws conclusions regarding pedagogical activities for learning. © The Author(s), 2010

To what extent do native and non-native writers make use of collocations?

Usage-based models claim that first language learning is based on the frequency-based analysis of memorised phrases. It is not clear though, whether adult second language learning works in the same way. It has been claimed that non-native language lacks idiomatic formulas, suggesting that learners neglect phrases, focusing instead on orthographic words. While a number of studies challenge the claim that non-native language lacks formulaicity, these studies have two important shortcomings: they fail to take account of appropriate frequency information and they pool the writing of different learners in ways that may mask individual differences. Using methodologies which avoid these problems, this study found that non-native writers rely heavily on high-frequency collocations, but that they underuse less frequent, strongly associated collocations (items which are probably highly salient for native speakers). These findings are consistent with usage-based models of acquisition while accounting for the impression that non-native writing lacks idiomatic phraseology. © Walter de Gruyter

Opportunities for mesoporous nanocrystalline SnO2 electrodes in kinetic and catalytic analyses of redox proteins

PFV (protein film voltammetry) allows kinetic analysis of redox and coupled-chemical events. However, the voltammograms report on the electron transfer through a flow of electrical current such that simultaneous spectroscopy is required for chemical insights into the species involved. Mesoporous nanocrystalline SnO2 electrodes provide opportunities for such ‘spectroelectrochemical’ analyses through their high surface area and optical transparency at visible wavelengths. Here, we illustrate kinetic and mechanistic insights that may be afforded by working with such electrodes through studies of Escherichia coli NrfA, a pentahaem cytochrome with nitrite and nitric oxide reductase activities. In addition, we demonstrate that the ability to characterize electrocatalytically active protein films by MCD (magnetic circular dichroism) spectroscopy is an advance that should ultimately assist our efforts to resolve catalytic intermediates in many redox enzymes