Facilitating collaborative reflective inquiry amongst teachers: what do we currently know?

Collaborative teacher learning is thought to improve teaching practice and student outcomes. Key to such learning is Reflective Professional Inquiry (RPI); seen as vital if practitioners are to engage effectively with new knowledge and ideas. Yet RPI is under-conceptualised and little is known about how to facilitate effective RPI. With this study we engage in a meta-narrative literature review, covering a range of disciplines (including education, medicine, and psychology), in an attempt to fill these knowledge gaps. Findings indicate that there are no existing interventions designed to foster RPI that have been rigorously evaluated. Consequently, there are no approaches that could be employed as part of collaborative teacher learning, with the expectation that practice or student outcomes will subsequently improve

Volatilization of fenpropimorph and clopyralid after spraying onto a sugar beet crop

Volatilization rates of pesticides were measured with two micrometeorological methods. For fenpropimorph, the highest rates (1.3-3.0% per hour) were measured in the first hours after application. The rate gradually declined to less than 0.01% per houron the sixth day. Clopyralid had much lower volatilization rates. They were highest (0.1% per hour) on the day after the day of application and declined below the detection limit (less than 0.01% per hour) on the sixth day after application. Rates calculated with the aerodynamic method were slightly higher than those calculated with the Bowen ratio

False Hopes, Missed Opportunities: How Economic Models Affect the IPCC Proposals in Special Report 15 “Global Warming of 1.5 °C” (2018). An Analysis From the Scientific Advisory Board of BUND

The 2018 IPCC Special Report SR15 developed four scenarios how temperature increases could either be limited to 1.5°, or, in the case of overshoot, could be brought back to that level by 2100. However, the Carbon Dioxide Removal options discussed to achieve “negative emissions” will affect not only the climate system, but also biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides. Unfortunately, the Integrated Assessment Models, and in particular the economic models incorporated in them were capable of integrating only a selective fraction of these effects, and ignore potential tipping points triggering irreversible processes, policies beyond economic instruments and consumption changes to happen over the next 80 years. Our analysis is based on an interdisciplinary expert elicitation, analysing the options suggested by the IPCC one by one. We find that most of them are associated with biodiversity loss, hazardous chemicals dispersion, enhanced energy consumption and/or other severe other damages. We suggest which measures can be applied sustainably, which should be dropped, and which additional ones have been omitted by the report

Weighted gene co-expression network analysis of the peripheral blood from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis patients

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a lethal disorder characterized by progressive degeneration of motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Diagnosis is mainly based on clinical symptoms, and there is currently no therapy to stop the disease or slow its progression. Since access to spinal cord tissue is not possible at disease onset, we investigated changes in gene expression profiles in whole blood of ALS patients.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Our transcriptional study showed dramatic changes in blood of ALS patients; 2,300 probes (9.4%) showed significant differential expression in a discovery dataset consisting of 30 ALS patients and 30 healthy controls. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was used to find disease-related networks (modules) and disease related hub genes. Two large co-expression modules were found to be associated with ALS. Our findings were replicated in a second (30 patients and 30 controls) and third dataset (63 patients and 63 controls), thereby demonstrating a highly significant and consistent association of two large co-expression modules with ALS disease status. Ingenuity Pathway Analysis of the ALS related module genes implicates enrichment of functional categories related to genetic disorders, neurodegeneration of the nervous system and inflammatory disease. The ALS related modules contain a number of candidate genes possibly involved in pathogenesis of ALS.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This first large-scale blood gene expression study in ALS observed distinct patterns between cases and controls which may provide opportunities for biomarker development as well as new insights into the molecular mechanisms of the disease.</p

Herausforderungen für eine nachhaltige Stoffpolitik

HERAUSFORDERUNGEN FÜR EINE NACHHALTIGE STOFFPOLITIK Herausforderungen für eine nachhaltige Stoffpolitik / Große Ophoff, Markus (Rights reserved) ( -