Plant methods:putting the spotlight on technological innovation in the plant sciences.

Plant Methods is a new journal for plant biologists, specialising in the rapid publication of peer-reviewed articles with a focus on technological innovation in the plant sciences. The aim of Plant Methods is to stimulate the development and adoption of new and improved techniques and research tools in plant biology. We hope to promote more consistent standards in the plant sciences, and make readily accessible laboratory and computer-based research tools available to the whole community. This will be achieved by publishing Research articles, Methodology papers and Reviews using the BioMed Central Open Access publishing model. The journal is supported by a prestigious editorial board, whose members all recognise the importance of technological innovation as a driver for basic science

The White House Counsel and Whitewater: Government Lawyers and the Scope of Privileged Communications

From the beginning of the Clinton Administration, the matters known collectively as Whitewater have almost constantly bedeviled the President and his staff, as well as the private attorneys who represent the President. Within the past two years, the investigations into Whitewater matters have given rise to two prominent controversies involving attempts to review the substance of between the lawyers who represent the President in his official capacity-the members of the Office of the White House Counsel-and those who represent him in his private capacity. One dispute involved a subpoena from a Senate committee, and the other involved a federal grand jury subpoena. The White House resisted both of these subpoenas, invoking the attorney-client privilege and the work-product doctrine. Each of these controversies raised a number of novel legal questions about the President\u27s relationship with the lawyers in the Office of the White House Counsel as well as the relationship between those lawyers and the President\u27s private counsel. Obviously, when the President seeks legal advice from his private lawyers, he (like any other citizen) can assert the attorney-client privilege in order to prevent the disclosure of those communications in a later court proceeding. But does the privilege also apply to communications between the President and lawyers who work for the President on the White House staff and are paid by the taxpayers? Does it matter if the party seeking the notes of such a communication is a congressional committee or a federal grand jury? Is any privilege waived if a non-lawyer member of the White House staff is present at the time of the communication? May the President\u27s communications with White House lawyers be discovered if these lawyers later share them with his private lawyers? Does the work-product doctrine or the executive privilege also apply to any such communications? In addition to the legal questions that were raised, the controversies themselves-as well as the way in which one of them was resolved-raised certain issues about the practical realities of raising a privilege claim. Do political realities make it impossible for the White House to raise a claim of privilege, no matter how valid that claim may be

The effects of different methods of cloze test construction and their relationship with a standardised reading comprehension test

The purpose of this study is to provide guidelines to classroom teachers for the construction of valid and reliable cloze comprehension tests. Review of the related literature suggested there are many diverse and contradictary opinions as to the most appropriate method of constructing cloze tests. The subjects were 49 Year 5 primary school children from two metropolitan schools. Three different comprehension tests were administered. The Gap Reading Comprehension Test and two Cloze Comprehension Tests consisting of 50 and 100 word deletions, in which the deletions began at either the fifth or sixth word of the second sentence. The Cloze Tests were graded with both the exact word and synonymic word scoring methods and then correlated with the Gap Reading Comprehension Test Reliability was established by the split-half method. Concurrent validity and reliablity were found to be greater in the 100 word deletion versions of the Cloze Tests, with increased reliability achieved when the tests were graded with the synonymic word scoring method. The results provide useful guidelines for classroom teachers in the construction of valid and reliable measures of reading comprehension

Low temperature aqueous phase oxidation of alkanes with metal doped zeolites prepared by chemical vapour infiltration

The low temperature oxidation of methane, ethane and propane to useful oxygenates in the aqueous phase using neat hydrogen peroxide is explored. High catalytic activity of metal doped zeolite catalysts in the target transformation of C1-C3 alkanes to their corresponding alcohols, aldehydes and carboxylic acids with low selectivity to carbon oxides (overoxidation products) has been achieved. Chemical vapour infiltration has been employed as the technique of choice to prepare metal doped zeolites used in this work with new methods to tune both selectivity to oxygenates and catalytic activity of these materials for alkane oxidation being presented. These new materials represent a step change in the design and application of zeolite catalysts for lower alkane oxidation from both a materials and oxidative chemistry perspective. The preparation technique has wider applicability in catalyst preparation and reproducibly affords very well dispersed and minute nanoparticles on a variety of support materials by an easily accessible methodology. Finally a new and innovative technique of catalyst preparation, with beneficial effects in alkane oxidation, dubbed “The Hybrid Method” is presented.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo