Program Improvement and Practice: In-Service and Pre-Service Student Teaching Reflections

A qualitative study was conducted with graduates (in-service teachers) and pre-service teacher candidates from a traditional elementary education program to explore perceptions of the student teaching process and its impact on teaching philosophy and practices. The program graduates and pre-service teachers described their experience as valuable, but believed their knowledge of pedagogy and classroom management to be deficient. The value of the internship process and implications for program improvement are discussed. Theory without practice is dead, and practice without theory is blind. — Ano

INJURIES IN AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL: A Review of the Literature

Background: Australian Rules Football is one of the most popular sports in Australia. Successful injury prevention relies on injury surveillance to establish the extent of injuries, to monitor injury patterns and to evaluate prevention strategies. Despite the popularity of participation at the community level, few injury surveillance studies have been published, so a detailed review of the literature is vital. There is limited information available outside of the elite level. Injury statistics for any professional sport may not necessarily be translatable to community sport level

Successful management of hamstring injuries in Australian Rules footballers: two case reports

Hamstring injuries are the most prevalent injury in Australian Rules football. There is a lack of evidence based literature on the treatment, prevention and management of hamstring injuries, although it is agreed that the etiology is complicated and multi-factorial. We present two cases of hamstring injury that had full resolution after spinal manipulation and correction of lumbar-pelvic biomechanics. There was no recurrence through preventative treatment over a twelve and sixteen week period. The use of spinal manipulation for treatment or prevention of hamstring injury has not been documented in sports medicine literature and should be further investigated in prospective randomized controlled trials

On the importance of testing gravity at distances less than 1cm

If the mechanism responsible for the smallness of the vacuum energy is consistent with local quantum field theory, general arguments suggest the existence of at least one unobserved scalar particle with Compton wavelength bounded from below by one tenth of a millimeter. We show that this bound is saturated if vacuum energy is a substantial component of the energy density of the universe. Therefore, the success of cosmological models with a significant vacuum energy component suggests the existence of new macroscopic forces with range in the sub-millimeter region. There are virtually no experimental constraints on the existence of quanta with this range of interaction.Comment: 9 pages TeX, 2 eps figures, uses mtexsis.tex and epsf.tex. Entry in 1996 Gravity Research Foundation essay competition. To be published in the Journal of General Relativity and Gravitatio

The detailed dynamics of the June–August Hadley Cell

The seminal theory for the Hadley Cells has demonstrated that their existence is necessary for the reduction of tropical temperature gradients to a value such that the implied zonal winds are realisable. At the heart of the theory is the notion of angular momentum conservation in the upper branch of the Hadley Cells. Eddy mixing associated with extra‐tropical systems is invoked to give continuity at the edge of the Hadley Cell and to reduce the subtropical jet by a factor of 3 or more to those observed. In this paper a detailed view is presented of the dynamics of the June–August Hadley Cell, as given by ERA data for the period 1981–2010, with an emphasis on the dynamics of the upper branch. The steady and transient northward fluxes of angular momentum have a very similar structure, both having a maximum on the equator and a reversal in sign near 12°S, with the transient flux merging into that associated with eddies on the winter sub‐tropical jet. In the northward absolute vorticity flux, the Coriolis torque is balanced by both the steady and transient fluxes. The overturning circulations that average to give the Hadley Cell are confined to specific longitudinal regions, as are the steady and transient momentum fluxes. In these regions, both intra‐seasonal and synoptic variations are important. The dominant contributor to the Hadley Cell is from the Indian Ocean and W Pacific regions, and the maxima in OLR variability and meridional wind in these regions have a characteristic structure associated with the Westward‐moving Mixed Rossby‐Gravity wave. Much of the upper tropospheric motion into the winter hemisphere occurs in filaments of air from the summer equatorial region. These filaments can reach the winter sub‐tropical jet, leading to the strengthening of it and of the eddies on it, implying strong tropical‐extratropical interaction

Impact of Gulf Stream SST biases on the global atmospheric circulation

The UK Met Office Unified Model in the Global Coupled 2 (GC2) configuration has a warm bias of up to almost 7K in the Gulf Stream SSTs in the winter season, which is associated with surface heat flux biases and potentially related to biases in the atmospheric circulation. The role of this SST bias is examined with a focus on the tropospheric response by performing three sensitivity experiments. The SST biases are imposed on the atmosphere-only configuration of the model over a small and medium section of the Gulf Stream, and also the wider North Atlantic. Here we show that the dynamical response to this anomalous Gulf Stream heating (and associated shifting and changing SST gradients) is to enhance vertical motion in the transient eddies over the Gulf Stream, rather than balance the heating with a linear dynamical meridional wind or meridional eddy heat transport. Together with the imposed Gulf Stream heating bias, the response affects the troposphere not only locally but also in remote regions of the Northern Hemisphere via a planetary Rossby wave response. The sensitivity experiments partially reproduce some of the differences in the coupled configuration of the model relative to the atmosphere-only configuration and to the ERA-Interim reanalysis. These biases may have implications for the ability of the model to respond correctly to variability or changes in the Gulf Stream. Better global prediction therefore requires particular focus on reducing any large western boundary current SST biases in these regions of high ocean-atmosphere interaction

Stress, burnout, depression and work-satisfaction amongst UK anaesthetic trainees; a quantitative analysis of the Satisfaction and Wellbeing in Anaesthetic Training study

There is growing evidence that anaesthetic trainees experience, and may be particularly susceptible to, high levels of work stress, burnout and depression. This is a concern for the safety and wellbeing of these doctors and the patients they treat. To date, there has been no in-depth evaluation of these issues amongst UK anaesthetic trainees examining which groups may be most affected and the professional and personal factors which are associated. We conducted an anonymous electronic survey to determine the prevalence of perceived stress, risk of burnout and depression, and work-satisfaction among anaesthetic trainees within South West England and Wales and explored in detail the influence of key demographic, lifestyle and anaesthetic training variables. We identified a denominator of 619 eligible participants and received 397 responses; a response rate of 64%. We observed a high prevalence of perceived stress (37% [95% CI 32 – 42]), burnout risk (25% [21-29]) and depression risk (18% [15-23]) and found that these issues frequently co-exist. Having no children, >3 days of sickness absence in the previous year, 7.5hrs/week of additional non-clinical work were independently predictive of negative psychological outcomes. Although female gender was associated with higher stress, burnout risk was more likely in male respondents. This information could help in the identification of at-risk groups, as well as informing ways to support these groups and influence resource and intervention design. Targeted interventions, such as modification of exercise behaviour and methods of reducing stressors relating to non-clinical workloads, warrant further research

Up-gradient eddy fluxes of potential vorticity near the subtropical jet

The role of eddy fluxes in the general circulation is often approached by treating eddies as (macro)turbulence. In this approach, the eddies act to diffuse certain quasiconservative quantities, such as potential vorticity (PV), along isentropic surfaces in the free atmosphere. The eddy fluxes are determined primarily by the eddy diffusivities and are necessarily down-gradient of the basic state PV field. Support for the (macro)turbulence approach stems from the fact that the eddy fluxes of PV in the free atmosphere are generally down-gradient in the long-term mean. Here we call attention to a pronounced and significant region of upgradient eddy PV fluxes on the poleward flank of the jet core in both hemispheres. The region of up-gradient (i.e., notionally “antidiffusive”) eddy PV fluxes is most pronounced during the winter and spring seasons and partially contradicts the turbulence approach described above. Analyses of the PV variance (potential enstrophy) budget suggest that the up-gradient PV fluxes represent local wave decay and are maintained by poleward fluxes of PV variance. Finite-amplitude effects thus represent leading order contributions to the PV variance budget, whereas dissipation is only of secondary importance locally. The appearance of up-gradient PV fluxes in the long-term mean is associated with the poleward shift of the jet—and thus the region of wave decay relative to wave growth—following wave-breaking events