The 'Good' Teacher? Constructing Teacher Identities for Lifelong Learning

The symposium will focus on trans-national constructions of the 'good' teacher through popular culture, through professional development orthodoxies and through professional practices such as professional growth plans, inspection and teacher regulation

Developing systems leadership in public health: A scoping report

This document reports the outcomes of a scoping project commissioned by Public Health England (PHE) in order to outline possibilities for developing the systems leadership capacity of public health registrars and newly appointed consultants. It has been written for those involved in the design, delivery and accreditation of training and professional development for public health registrars and consultants across the UK in order to support the upscaling of systems leadership development opportunities within the sector.The project was undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team based at the University of the West of England, drawing on the expertise of the Bristol Leadership and Change Centre and the Centre for Public Health and Wellbeing as well as a number of independent consultants with backgrounds in leadership and organisation development and public health. The methodology involved consultation and engagement with a range of stakeholders with extensive experience of the public health landscape in the UK, including 10 registrars, 2 consultants, 3 directors of public health, 3 PHE managers/board members, 3 Faculty of Public Health (FPH) managers/board members, 4 heads of school/postgraduate deans, and 4 other UK-based public health professionals, through interviews, a focus group and a co-design workshop. Building on insights from the literature review and stakeholder consultation/engagement a series of principles and concepts underpinning a systems approach to leadership development are presented, along with six levels of learning, ranging from leading self to leading team/organisation, leading collaborations/partnerships, leading local systems and leading wider system/across systems. These principles are then used to outline an indicative development framework for public health professionals through the five years of the specialty training programme (as registrar) into the years following qualification (as consultant). Three distinct phases of learning/development are outlined, along with indicative content and learning outcomes. The report concludes with a series of 18 recommended actions, grouped into four thematic areas. It is hoped that this document provides a valuable resource for those involved in the development and accreditation of public health professionals and a timely call to action

Construction and characterization of new piggyBac vectors for constitutive or inducible expression of heterologous gene pairs and the identification of a previously unrecognized activator sequence in piggyBac

BACKGROUND: We constructed and characterized several new piggyBac vectors to provide transposition of constitutively- or inducibly-expressible heterologous gene pairs. The dual constitutive control element consists of back-to-back copies of a baculovirus immediate early (ie1) promoter separated by a baculovirus enhancer (hr5). The dual inducible control element consists of back-to-back copies of a minimal cytomegalovirus (CMV(min)) promoter separated by a synthetic operator (TetO7), which drives transcription in the presence of a mutant transcriptional repressor plus tetracycline. RESULTS: Characterization of these vectors revealed an unexpected position effect, in which heterologous genes adjacent to the 3'- terminal region ("rightward" genes) were consistently expressed at higher levels than those adjacent to the 5'-terminal region ("leftward" genes) of the piggyBac element. This position effect was observed with all six heterologous genes examined and with both transcriptional control elements. Further analysis demonstrated that this position effect resulted from stimulation of rightward gene expression by the internal domain sequence of the 3'-terminal region of piggyBac. Inserting a copy of this sequence into the 5'- terminal repeat region of our new piggyBac vectors in either orientation stimulated leftward gene expression. Representative piggyBac vectors designed for constitutive or inducible expression of heterologous gene pairs were shown to be functional as insect transformation vectors. CONCLUSION: This study is significant because (a) it demonstrates the utility of a strategy for the construction of piggyBac vectors that can provide constitutive or inducible heterologous gene pair expression and (b) it reveals the presence of a previously unrecognized transcriptional activator in piggyBac, which is an important and increasingly utilized transposable element

ICMSF Methods Studies. XV. Comparison of Four Media and Methods for Enumerating Staphylococcus aureus in Powdered Milk.

Four media were examined for their usefulness in enumerating Staphylococcus aureus inoculated (a) into milk that was then dried or (b) directly into dried milk powder. In all, seven strains of S. aureus were inoculated individually into each preparation and were enumerated after two periods of storage (18 to 19 d and 60 to 61 d). Fourteen laboratories from twelve countries participated in the comparison which found that direct plating on agar medium in 14-cm petri dishes may be as useful as enrichment followed by streaking. Plating on Baird-Parker medium or on Hauschild pork plasma fibrinogen medium and a MPN method using Giolitti and Cantoni's broth with Tween 80 were equally sensitive for enumerating S. aureus in dried milk powder. The use of Hauschild medium may eliminate the need for supplementary tests to confirm colonies as S. aureus , but in some cases was found to fail in some laboratories. Giolitti and Cantoni's broth without Tween 80 generally was less useful than the three other media for enumerating S. aureus . S. aureus inoculated into milk that was then dried survived longer than when inoculated into dried milk

Thermal adaptation of soil microbial respiration to elevated temperature

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Blackwell for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Ecology Letters 11 (2008): 1316-1327, doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2008.01251.x.In the short-term heterotrophic soil respiration is strongly and positively related to temperature. In the long-term its response to temperature is uncertain. One reason for this is because in field experiments increases in respiration due to warming are relatively short-lived. The explanations proposed for this ephemeral response include depletion of fast-cycling, soil carbon pools and thermal adaptation of microbial respiration. Using a >15 year soil warming experiment in a mid-latitude forest, we show that the apparent ‘acclimation’ of soil respiration at the ecosystem scale results from combined effects of reductions in soil carbon pools and microbial biomass, and thermal adaptation of microbial respiration. Mass specific respiration rates were lower when seasonal temperatures were higher, suggesting that rate reductions under experimental warming likely occurred through temperature-induced changes in the microbial community. Our results imply that stimulatory effects of global temperature rise on soil respiration rates may be lower than currently predicted.This research was supported by the Office of Science (BER), U.S. Department of Energy and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Association of tiered restrictions and a second lockdown with COVID-19 deaths and hospital admissions in England: a modelling study.

BACKGROUND: A second wave of COVID-19 cases in autumn, 2020, in England led to localised, tiered restrictions (so-called alert levels) and, subsequently, a second national lockdown. We examined the impact of these tiered restrictions, and alternatives for lockdown stringency, timing, and duration, on severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission and hospital admissions and deaths from COVID-19. METHODS: We fit an age-structured mathematical model of SARS-CoV-2 transmission to data on hospital admissions and hospital bed occupancy (ISARIC4C/COVID-19 Clinical Information Network, National Health Service [NHS] England), seroprevalence (Office for National Statistics, UK Biobank, REACT-2 study), virology (REACT-1 study), and deaths (Public Health England) across the seven NHS England regions from March 1, to Oct 13, 2020. We analysed mobility (Google Community Mobility) and social contact (CoMix study) data to estimate the effect of tiered restrictions implemented in England, and of lockdowns implemented in Northern Ireland and Wales, in October, 2020, and projected epidemiological scenarios for England up to March 31, 2021. FINDINGS: We estimated a reduction in the effective reproduction number (Rt) of 2% (95% credible interval [CrI] 0-4) for tier 2, 10% (6-14) for tier 3, 35% (30-41) for a Northern Ireland-stringency lockdown with schools closed, and 44% (37-49) for a Wales-stringency lockdown with schools closed. From Oct 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021, a projected COVID-19 epidemic without tiered restrictions or lockdown results in 280 000 (95% projection interval 274 000-287 000) hospital admissions and 58 500 (55 800-61 100) deaths. Tiered restrictions would reduce hospital admissions to 238 000 (231 000-245 000) and deaths to 48 600 (46 400-50 700). From Nov 5, 2020, a 4-week Wales-type lockdown with schools remaining open-similar to the lockdown measures announced in England in November, 2020-was projected to further reduce hospital admissions to 186 000 (179 000-193 000) and deaths to 36 800 (34 900-38 800). Closing schools was projected to further reduce hospital admissions to 157 000 (152 000-163 000) and deaths to 30 300 (29 000-31 900). A projected lockdown of greater than 4 weeks would reduce deaths but would bring diminishing returns in reducing peak pressure on hospital services. An earlier lockdown would have reduced deaths and hospitalisations in the short term, but would lead to a faster resurgence in cases after January, 2021. In a post-hoc analysis, we estimated that the second lockdown in England (Nov 5-Dec 2) reduced Rt by 22% (95% CrI 15-29), rather than the 32% (25-39) reduction estimated for a Wales-stringency lockdown with schools open. INTERPRETATION: Lockdown measures outperform less stringent restrictions in reducing cumulative deaths. We projected that the lockdown policy announced to commence in England on Nov 5, with a similar stringency to the lockdown adopted in Wales, would reduce pressure on the health service and would be well timed to suppress deaths over the winter period, while allowing schools to remain open. Following completion of the analysis, we analysed new data from November, 2020, and found that despite similarities in policy, the second lockdown in England had a smaller impact on behaviour than did the second lockdown in Wales, resulting in more deaths and hospitalisations than we originally projected when focusing on a Wales-stringency scenario for the lockdown. FUNDING: Horizon 2020, UK Medical Research Council, and the National Institute for Health Research

Vygotsky, Wittgenstein, and sociocultural theory

This paper considers the use made of Vygotsky’s work by many who take a sociocultural perspective and, in particular, by those who use his work to advance a particular view of second language acquisition and the ‘silent period’. It is argued that Vygotsky’s account as represented in Thought and Language (Vygotsky, 1986) needs to be thought of as consisting of two distinct aspects: first, the observations he made (or claimed to have made) and, second, the theoretical account he proposed to explain them. It is shown that some of Vygotsky’s observations are problematic but that, even if they are accepted, Vygotsky’s theoretical account suffers from fundamental difficulties. Thus the support claimed from Vygotsky in accounts of second language acquisition is misplaced, first because of those difficulties and, second, because many who claim support from Vygotsky, do not need or even use his theory but instead focus their attention on his empirical observations and assume incorrectly that if their own empirical observations match Vygotsky’s, then Vygotsky’s theory can be accepted. Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is shown to provide a perspective which dispels confusions about, and gives us a clearer insight into, the issues