Paradox and promise in joint school/university arts research

Collaborative university and school research projects are inevitably labour intensive endeavours that require the careful negotiation of trust and the joint development of critique of current practice. While this raises tension it also builds generative communities of inquiry that can enhance both theory and practice. This paper reports on an Arts project undertaken in primary classrooms between university staff and generalist teacher co-researchers focusing on children’s idea development in dance, drama, music and art. This two year project is briefly outlined and some issues that arise in school research are explored. Project collaborators need to exercise caution in their examination of practice and strive to resist premature closure. All parties need to hold the tension of apparent contradictions, being both interested (in effective Arts pedagogy) and disinterested (in order to heighten perception) so that they might ‘surprise themselves in a landscape of practice with which many are very familiar indeed’ (McWilliam 2004:14). These issues and paradoxes in collaborative research are considered alongside some particular processes that build school and university partnerships

Exploring children's development of ideas in music and dance

Eisner maintains that the Arts education community needs ‘empirically grounded examples of artistic thinking related to the nature of the tasks students engage in, the material with which they work, the context’s norms and the cues the teacher provides to advance their students’ thinking’ (2000:217). This paper reflects on preliminary results of a collaborative research project between teachers and university researchers that is investigating how children develop and refine arts-making ideas and related skills in Dance and Music in a small sample of schools in New Zealand. Factors such as the place of repetition in the development of ideas, the relevance of offers, the place of verbal and non-verbal communication in arts idea generation, and group work as an accepted ritual of practice, are explored and discussed

Treating ROP: how and when.

Laser treatment of ROP is highly effective. However, special care should be taken when treating preterm or newborn infants, and long-term follow-up is essential. There are also new treatments on the horizon, particularly in cases where laser treatment is not possible or has failed

Screening for ROP.

Screening babies for ROP is very important. Unless ROP is detected early and promptly treated, it can lead to blindness and permanent visual impairment. This article describes who to screen, when and where to screen, how to screen, and what to do next

A carbamazepine-indomethacin (1:1) cocrystal produced by milling

An X-ray amorphous mixture of carbamazepine and indomethacin transforms upon annealing to produce a novel 1:1 cocrystal, whose structure has been determined from laboratory powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) data

Care leavers and homelessness in England: protective factors offered by Right2BCared4 and Staying Put 18+ initiatives

This paper will explore the relationship between leaving care and homelessness in England and set the context for two initiatives currently being piloted; Right2BCared4 and Staying Put 18+ Family Placement Programme. The protective factors that underpin both pilots will be outlined. In addition, a vulnerable group of care leavers will be identified that may fall outside of these initiatives and may be at risk of the poorest outcomes in terms of homelessness and accompanying challenges

Mobile games with intelligence: a killer application?

Mobile gaming is an arena full of innovation, with developers exploring new kinds of games, with new kinds of interaction between the mobile device, players, and the connected world that they live in and move through. The mobile gaming world is a perfect playground for AI and CI, generating a maelstrom of data for games that use adaptation, learning and smart content creation. In this paper, we explore this potential killer application for mobile intelligence. We propose combining small, light-weight AI/CI libraries with AI/CI services in the cloud for the heavy lifting. To make our ideas more concrete, we describe a new mobile game that we built that shows how this can work

MMI partial extraction geochemistry for the resolution of anthropogenic activities across the archaeological Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum

Sixty three soils samples, fourteen samples of previously excavated archaeological material, and five background soil samples taken at the Silchester Roman Town of Calleva Atrebatum in the County of Hampshire, United Kingdom were analysed by the Mobile Metal Ion (MMI) method for a total of fifty three elements. Samples from within the town walls showed considerably higher concentrations than samples outside for many elements; Au, Ag, Cu and Sn were in extremely anomalous concentrations, Bi, Cd, Hg, Mo, P and Pb were anomalous and Sb and Zn in elevated concentrations. The overall pattern of element distribution is one of an annulus of higher elemental concentrations surrounding a centre of generally lower values centred on the previously excavated Forum basilica. The elements Zr, Ti, Th, Ti, Tl, Nb, Sn, Sc, Cr, Co, Sb, Bi, Ce, Nd (and all other REEs), show similar distributions to one another, and their distribution and that of the noble and base metals, as highlighted by various additive indices, is considered to be the result of metallurgical processing on site. The low values for most elements around the Forum basilica are the result of disturbance of the soil geochemical profile in this area by previous archaeological excavation

Prespacer processing and specific integration in a Type I-A CRISPR system

This work was supported by a grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (REF: BB/M021017/1 to MFW).The CRISPR–Cas system for prokaryotic adaptive immunity provides RNA-mediated protection from viruses and mobile genetic elements. Adaptation is dependent on the Cas1 and Cas2 proteins along with varying accessory proteins. Here we analyse the process in Sulfolobus solfataricus, showing that while Cas1 and Cas2 catalyze spacer integration in vitro, host factors are required for specificity. Specific integration also requires at least 400 bp of the leader sequence, and is dependent on the presence of hydrolysable ATP, suggestive of an active process that may involve DNA remodelling. Specific spacer integration is associated with processing of prespacer 3′ ends in a PAM-dependent manner. This is reflected in PAM-dependent processing of prespacer 3′ ends in vitro in the presence of cell lysate or the Cas4 nuclease, in a reaction consistent with PAM-directed binding and protection of prespacer DNA. These results highlight the diverse interplay between CRISPR–Cas elements and host proteins across CRISPR types.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

An investigation of nondeterminism in functional programming languages

This thesis investigates nondeterminism in functional programming languages. To establish a precise understanding of nondeterministic language properties, Sondergaard and Sestoft's analysis and definitions of functional language properties are adopted as are the characterizations of weak and strong nondeterminism. This groundwork is followed by a denotational semantic description of a nondeterministic language (suggested by Sondergaard and Sestoft). In this manner, a precise characterization of the effects of strong nondeterminism is developed. Methods used to hide nondeterminism to in order to overcome or sidestep the problem of strong nondeterminism in pure functional languages are defined. These different techniques ensure that functional languages remain pure but also include some of the advantages of nondeterminism. Lastly, this discussion of nondeterminism is applied to the area of functional parallel language implementation to indicate that the related problem and the possible solutions are not purely academic. This application gives rise to an interesting discussion on optimization of list parallelism. This technique relies on the ability to decide when a bag may be used instead of a list