Record and analysis with conclusions upon the examination of 1,041 school children attending the Bradford Eye and Ear Hospital, from April 1902 to November 1905

With -- regard to the Hypermetropíc eye becoming Myopic, I fail to find sufficient evidence as to whether the cause is due to the strain pure and simple, or to a diseased condition of the Choroid etc: Personally I think it is due to a combination of both of these conditions, although the: strain certainly plays a very important part.In comparing the different groups it is a noticeable fact that girls are greater sufferers than boys, and I would emphasize the fact that it is in children between the ages of 7 and 11 years that the strain upon the eyesight appears to be the greatest.The absolute necessity for school children having both eyes examined separately for visual acuity upon admission to the school.I have tabulated a series of cases (see appendix) showing that undoubtedly children may have fairly good, or very good vision in one eye, whilst the vision of the other eye is moderate, or even bad.Several of these cases which have been tabulated were not-sent-by the school authorities but, brought by the parent, these children having passed the tests employed.It certainly appears to me to be a distinct advantage for children to have the combined use of.both eyes. If they are allowed to go on using one eye only, the other eye eventually becomes Amblyopic, thus they are handicapped during their school life, and also in after ' life.Spasm of Accommodation is a condition which is frequently met with in our children, and it is on this account that I strongly condemn the practice which is very much in . vogue, of parents, and even school authorities sending children to so -.called "Opticians "; for it is impossible for anyone to fully estimate the degree of error of refraction in any child unless its "accommodation" is properly paralysed; a fact which has been well illustrated in numerous instances in my paper.In many of the children who had Homatropine dropped into their eyes, their retinoscopy taken, yet obtained no improvement with glasses, I find that when Atropine was given for a week, and retinoscopy again taken, there was found to be a great difference'between the first and second examination, showing the fact that "Spasm of " Accommodation" may lead one into error.Although the visual acuity may be bad in some cases, upon examination by retinoscopy the eye is proved to be Emmetropic. Of the 110 cases of Spasm of Accommodation: 91 were Hypermetropes, 12 were Myopes, 3 were Mixed Astig: 1 was Hyper: c Myopia, 4 were Normal. This shows, that the condition occurs most frequently in Hypermetropes.From the complications which occurred in the various groups I think we can safely deduct that it is absolutely necessary to have the eyes of every child examined as soon as there is any inflammatory condition of the mechanism of the eye; for although the defect in refraction may not be the actual cause, yet, it does aggravate the trouble, and if the proper correcting glasses are given, this prevents a recurrence.It is suggested that very many of these complications are produced and aggravated by the child rubbing its tired eye.Here again I consider we have a very strong argument against unqualified men being, partially trained as so- called "Opticians" when they would be quite unable to diagnose any of these diseased conditions.Children should not be admitted to any school before the age of six, and even at that age the work should be light.It. should be forcibly impressed upon parents that schools are not nurseriesè The early training of all children should be in the hands of the mothers, and they alone are responsible for the care and training of their children.It would certainly be interesting to compare the eyesight of children who have attended school from the age-of three and upwards with those who have not been sent to school before the age of five or six years.I consider that a wise course has been adopted by the authorities during the past. twelve months in stopping the grant for children under five years. of age.I am convinced that the authorities are taking precautions in all directions save that of compelling-parents to have the eyes of their children properly examined by an Ophthalmologist.What might be done with advantage would be to point out to'the parents by a "printed letter" the absolute necessity of their children having the full and combined use of both eyes, and the folly of not allowing them to wear glasses simply for the sake of appearance; and also to point out that from the disuse of one eye, the child may eventually lose the sight of this eye, and thus be considerably handicapped in his after life.I am fully aware of the fact that no action could be taken if the parent refused to have his child attended to, yet I feel certain that if compulsory education is enforced, then it is not sufficient for the authorities to simply give one, two, or three notices, and then take no further action, but they must,in the interest of the child, and thus, of the community, refuse to allow children t take advantage of free education; for undoubtedly drastic measures are necessary, otherwise, through lack of thoughts or through ignorance, our children may become useless citizens.Another alternative is to provide a properly trained Ophthalmologist and have children attending all schools thoroughly examined, ignoring- the'parent. Upon this point I will make same observations later.Home lessons for children. under nine or ten years old, should be strongly discouraged, and even at this age it should depend upon the child's capabilities as to the amount given.It should be impressed upon the parent the importance of seeing that the child when doing home lessons, should be in a properly lighted room, and that the desk, form or chair, and paper, be in proper relationship.Children who have defective eyesight or are otherwise weakly, should have a modified curriculum.There should be a period of rest between all lessons, also constant change from reading or writing to black board, or object lessons etc.Teachers should be instructed as to the elementary facts of the relationship of school work and strain to the eyesight. I find that upon this point very many teachers are extremely ignorant, and I would enforce a special class of instruction upon this subject.That there is an advantage of having the eyesight of school children properly examined and their error of refraction corrected, I think no one will doubt, but I think the following-tables. which give the visual acuity of the right and left eye of 683 cases upon their first "visit, and the visual acuity of 407 of these cases upon their last visit to the Hospital, will give an indication of the advantages which are obtained by treatment

STM and ab initio study of holmium nanowires on a Ge(111) Surface

A nanorod structure has been observed on the Ho/Ge(111) surface using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). The rods do not require patterning of the surface or defects such as step edges in order to grow as is the case for nanorods on Si(111). At low holmium coverage the nanorods exist as isolated nanostructures while at high coverage they form a periodic 5x1 structure. We propose a structural model for the 5x1 unit cell and show using an ab initio calculation that the STM profile of our model structure compares favorably to that obtained experimentally for both filled and empty states sampling. The calculated local density of states shows that the nanorod is metallic in character.Comment: 4 pages, 12 figures (inc. subfigures). Presented at the the APS March meeting, Baltimore MD, 200

Priorities, identity and the environment: Negotiating the early teenage years

This study focuses on the negotiation of environmental identity by ten New Zealand students as they progressed from late primary school to junior secondary school. Interviews with these students and their parents focussed on six theoretical perspective prominent in environmental education: significant life experiences, transformative learning, environmental literacy, values, action competence and environmental identity. Thirteen major themes emerged, which are discussed in terms of two overarching findings. Firstly, the deep-seated, composite and pivotal resonances between home and school influences in effective environmental education for sustainability (EEfS) learning are described, and suggestions are made for how this can be better taken into account. Secondly, a focus on the complex negotiation of the early teenage years suggests how promoting EEfS might occur more productively in secondary schools

An exploration of the pedagogies employed to integrate knowledge in work-integrated learning

This article describes a three‐sector, national research project that investigated the integration aspect of work‐integrated learning (WIL). The context for this study is three sectors of New Zealand higher education: business and management, sport, and science and engineering, and a cohort of higher educational institutions that offer WIL/cooperative education in variety of ways. The aims of this study were to investigate the pedagogical approaches in WIL programs that are currently used by WIL practitioners in terms of learning, and the integration of academic‐workplace learning. The research constituted a series of collective case studies, and there were two main data sources — interviews with three stakeholder groups (namely employers, students, and co‐op practitioners), and analyses of relevant documentation (e.g., course/paper outlines, assignments on reflective practice, portfolio of learning, etc.). The research findings suggest that there is no consistent mechanism by which placement coordinators, off‐campus supervisors, or mentors seek to employ or develop pedagogies to foster learning and the integration of knowledge. Learning, it seems, occurs by means of legitimate peripheral participation with off‐campus learning occurring as a result of students working alongside professionals in their area via an apprenticeship model of learning. There is no evidence of explicit attempts to integrate on‐ and off‐campus learning, although all parties felt this would and should occur. However, integration is implicitly or indirectly fostered by a variety of means such as the use of reflective journals

Seven challenges in modeling vaccine preventable diseasesC

Vaccination has been one of the most successful public health measures since the introduction of basic sanitation. Substantial mortality and morbidity reductions have been achieved via vaccination against many infections, and the list of diseases that are potentially controllable by vaccines is growing steadily. We introduce key challenges for modelling in shaping our understanding and guiding policy decisions related to vaccine preventable diseases

Measured Dynamic Social Contact Patterns Explain the Spread of H1N1v Influenza

Patterns of social mixing are key determinants of epidemic spread. Here we present the results of an internet-based social contact survey completed by a cohort of participants over 9,000 times between July 2009 and March 2010, during the 2009 H1N1v influenza epidemic. We quantify the changes in social contact patterns over time, finding that school children make 40% fewer contacts during holiday periods than during term time. We use these dynamically varying contact patterns to parameterise an age-structured model of influenza spread, capturing well the observed patterns of incidence; the changing contact patterns resulted in a fall of approximately 35% in the reproduction number of influenza during the holidays. This work illustrates the importance of including changing mixing patterns in epidemic models. We conclude that changes in contact patterns explain changes in disease incidence, and that the timing of school terms drove the 2009 H1N1v epidemic in the UK. Changes in social mixing patterns can be usefully measured through simple internet-based surveys

Robust modeling of human contact networks across different scales and proximity-sensing techniques

The problem of mapping human close-range proximity networks has been tackled using a variety of technical approaches. Wearable electronic devices, in particular, have proven to be particularly successful in a variety of settings relevant for research in social science, complex networks and infectious diseases dynamics. Each device and technology used for proximity sensing (e.g., RFIDs, Bluetooth, low-power radio or infrared communication, etc.) comes with specific biases on the close-range relations it records. Hence it is important to assess which statistical features of the empirical proximity networks are robust across different measurement techniques, and which modeling frameworks generalize well across empirical data. Here we compare time-resolved proximity networks recorded in different experimental settings and show that some important statistical features are robust across all settings considered. The observed universality calls for a simplified modeling approach. We show that one such simple model is indeed able to reproduce the main statistical distributions characterizing the empirical temporal networks

Mutations in fam20b and xylt1 Reveal That Cartilage Matrix Controls Timing of Endochondral Ossification by Inhibiting Chondrocyte Maturation

Differentiating cells interact with their extracellular environment over time. Chondrocytes embed themselves in a proteoglycan (PG)-rich matrix, then undergo a developmental transition, termed “maturation,” when they express ihh to induce bone in the overlying tissue, the perichondrium. Here, we ask whether PGs regulate interactions between chondrocytes and perichondrium, using zebrafish mutants to reveal that cartilage PGs inhibit chondrocyte maturation, which ultimately dictates the timing of perichondral bone development. In a mutagenesis screen, we isolated a class of mutants with decreased cartilage matrix and increased perichondral bone. Positional cloning identified lesions in two genes, fam20b and xylosyltransferase1 (xylt1), both of which encode PG synthesis enzymes. Mutants failed to produce wild-type levels of chondroitin sulfate PGs, which are normally abundant in cartilage matrix, and initiated perichondral bone formation earlier than their wild-type siblings. Primary chondrocyte defects might induce the bone phenotype secondarily, because mutant chondrocytes precociously initiated maturation, showing increased and early expression of such markers as runx2b, collagen type 10a1, and ihh co-orthologs, and ihha mutation suppressed early perichondral bone in PG mutants. Ultrastructural analyses demonstrated aberrant matrix organization and also early cellular features of chondrocyte hypertrophy in mutants. Refining previous in vitro reports, which demonstrated that fam20b and xylt1 were involved in PG synthesis, our in vivo analyses reveal that these genes function in cartilage matrix production and ultimately regulate the timing of skeletal development

Airflow Dynamics of Coughing in Healthy Human Volunteers by Shadowgraph Imaging: An Aid to Aerosol Infection Control

Cough airflow dynamics have been previously studied using a variety of experimental methods. In this study, real-time, non-invasive shadowgraph imaging was applied to obtain additional analyses of cough airflows produced by healthy volunteers. Twenty healthy volunteers (10 women, mean age 32.2±12.9 years; 10 men, mean age 25.3±2.5 years) were asked to cough freely, then into their sleeves (as per current US CDC recommendations) in this study to analyze cough airflow dynamics. For the 10 females (cases 1–10), their maximum detectable cough propagation distances ranged from 0.16–0.55 m, with maximum derived velocities of 2.2–5.0 m/s, and their maximum detectable 2-D projected areas ranged from 0.010–0.11 m2, with maximum derived expansion rates of 0.15–0.55 m2/s. For the 10 males (cases 11–20), their maximum detectable cough propagation distances ranged from 0.31–0.64 m, with maximum derived velocities of 3.2–14 m/s, and their maximum detectable 2-D projected areas ranged from 0.04–0.14 m2, with maximum derived expansion rates of 0.25–1.4 m2/s