An exploration of primary teachers' understanding of maths anxiety and their perceptions of a training and coaching intervention designed to increase their understanding of maths anxiety and confidence in supporting children with maths anxiety

The causes, prevalence, and negative impact of mathematics anxiety (MA) on children and young people’s (CYP’s) mathematics learning, performance, attitude, and mental health have been well investigated (Ganley et al., 2021; Namkung et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2019). Furthermore, it has been suggested that MA develops due to students' prior negative experiences learning mathematics in the classroom and that teachers play significant roles in forming CYP's MA. Therefore, improving teachers' understanding of MA and increasing their confidence in supporting CYP with MA would be the first step to reducing CYP's MA. This study investigates primary teachers' understanding of MA, how they support children with MA, and the factors they believe impact their support for these children. Establishing this guides the design of an intervention combining training and coaching, aiming to deepen primary teachers’ understanding of MA and increase their confidence in supporting children with MA. The responses to the intervention are evaluated to establish whether this is a practical way for EPs to support teachers in reducing CYP’s MA. In Phase 1, semi-structured interviews with eleven primary school teachers were analysed via reflexive thematic analysis. This information was used to design the training and coaching content for Phase 2. In Phase 2, training was delivered to groups of primary teachers in-person and online, followed by four sessions of coaching. To evaluate the effectiveness of this intervention, feedback was sought from the participants via questionnaires, coaching notes, and recordings of coaching review sessions. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the quantitative data, and reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data. Phase 1 findings were that awareness and understanding of MA were low and incomplete in these primary teachers. Phase 2 findings indicate that the intervention combining training and coaching deepened their understanding of MA, increased their confidence in supporting children with MA, and enabled them to apply strategies in their practice. The findings suggest that this intervention is a feasible and valuable tool for EPs to support primary teachers in supporting children with MA

Survey of urologists on clients’ demand for screening for prostate cancer in Nigeria

Objective: The aim of this article is to document the experience of urologists on clients’ demand for prostate cancer screening among Nigerians.Materials and Methods: The study is a cross-sectional evaluation of the urologists that attended the Fourteenth Annual Meeting and the Scientific Conference of the Nigerian Association of Urological Surgeons. A structured questionnaire was used to assess the estimated workload of the respondents, with reference to prostate cancer management, the stage proportion at the time of diagnosis, and the proportion of patients requesting for CaP screening. The data was analyzed using the SPSS version 15 statistical software.Results: Twenty-two respondents completed and returned the questionnaire and formed the basis of further analysis. About 76.9% of the consultant urologists were also lecturers in their respective universities. They were all actively practicing and a majority of them, 76.9%, had up to 10 years experience as practicing urologists. The majority of the respondents managed between one and fifteen new patients with CaP every month, with 36.4% of them managing more than 15 new patients on an average every month. About 95.4% of all the patients seen by the respondents were diagnosed with advanced stages of the disease, while the remaining ones were incidental findings. About one half of the respondents attended to clients seeking for advice on CaP ‘often’ or ‘very often,’ while 40.9% attended to them ‘occasionally,’ with a mean of 4.67 clients seeking advice per month. The majority of respondents, 20 (22); 90.9%, were ‘not aware’ of any national guideline on CaP screening.Conclusions: A majority of practitioners affirmed that patients with prostate cancer present late. The mean number of patients requesting for screening for prostate cancer per month, per respondent, for CaP, is still low. It is the authors’ belief that the trend may not change until there is an appropriate effort at health education, to enlighten the populace

Occurrence of Pospiviroid in potato, tomato and some ornamental plants in Turkey

In order to investigate the Pospiviroid in potato, tomato and some ornamental plants in Turkey, a survey study was carried out from 2006 to 2009. During this survey study, a total of 1766 samples (1047potato samples, 258 tomato leaves and 461 ornamental plants) were tested by reverse transcriptionpolymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and, the samples found to be positive in RT-PCR were also checked in return polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (R-PAGE). Of these samples, potato tubers were collected from markets, leaf samples from potato fields (Erzurum), tomato samples from field (Tokat, Amasya, Balýkesir and Bursa) and greenhouses (Antalya and Mula), leaves and vines of ornamental plants from greenhouses (Yalova) and florists (Erzurum) and recreation areas (Ankara, zmir and Trabzon). In the result of RT-PCR test, PSTVd was detected in 6 out of 891 potato tubers and CSVd in 2out of 154 chrysanthemums. On the other side, tomato, citrus and most ornamental plants belonging to different families were found to be free from pospiviroid. This is the first report of CSVd in Turkey

Modeling Rapidly Fading Supernovae as Nickel-Free Core-Collapse Explosions of Extended Helium Stars

Supernovae are the engines of the universe, pulling material out of the furnaces of stars and spewing it out into their galaxies. As some of the most powerful explosions since the Big Bang, they influence not only the chemical but also mechanical evolution of the galaxies they inhabit. They induce star formation and produce the building blocks of planets, organisms, and ultimately, civilizations. Understanding the connections between the supernovae we observe and the stars that would have produced them is a critical piece of understanding this process. Unfortunately, we rarely have the ability to observe the progenitor stars of supernovae directly; it is usually difficult to predict when a given star will explode, and most are in galaxies too distant to allow observation of individual stars. Instead, we typically must leverage our understanding of the explosions themselves to reveal the nature of the stars that produced them. Using analytical and numerical calculations, it is possible to predict the supernovae from certain types of stars and work backwards. In this thesis, we present a new model for previously elusive rapidly fading supernovae, which we believe are due to the core-collapse explosions of massive stars inside extended hydrogen-free envelopes or previously ejected mass shells. This model requires not only pre-explosion stellar radii of unprecedented size for hydrogen-free stars but also a lack of radioactive nickel, which is usually present in supernovae. We show our process from simple toy models to self-consistent explosions of stellar models and compare our results to existing rapidly fading supernovae. Understanding these unusual transients will shed light on the many possible ways stars behave shortly before death and also may be critical for understanding the population of core-collapse supernovae as a whole.</p

SN 2015U: A Rapidly Evolving and Luminous Type Ibn Supernova

Supernova (SN) 2015U (also known as PSN J07285387+3349106) was discovered in NGC 2388 on 2015 Feb. 11. A rapidly evolving and luminous event, it showed effectively hydrogen-free spectra dominated by relatively narrow helium P-Cygni spectral features and it was classified as a SN Ibn. In this paper we present photometric, spectroscopic, and spectropolarimetric observations of SN 2015U, including a Keck/DEIMOS spectrum (resolution $\approx$ 5000) which fully resolves the optical emission and absorption features. We find that SN 2015U is best understood via models of shock breakout from extended and dense circumstellar material (CSM), likely created by a history of mass loss from the progenitor with an extreme outburst within $\sim$1-2 yr of core collapse (but we do not detect any outburst in our archival imaging of NGC 2388). We argue that the high luminosity of SN 2015U was powered not through $^{56}$Ni decay but via the deposition of kinetic energy into the ejecta/CSM shock interface. Though our analysis is hampered by strong host-galaxy dust obscuration (which likely exhibits multiple components), our dataset makes SN 2015U one of the best-studied Type Ibn supernovae and provides a bridge of understanding to other rapidly fading transients, both luminous and relatively faint.Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures, 4 table

Rapidly fading supernovae from massive star explosions

Transient surveys have recently discovered a class of supernovae (SNe) with extremely rapidly declining light curves. These events are also often relatively faint, especially compared to Type Ia SNe. The common explanation for these events involves a weak explosion, producing a radioactive outflow with small ejected mass and kinetic energy (M ∼ 0.1 M_⊙ and E ∼ 0.1 B, respectively), perhaps from the detonation of a helium shell on a white dwarf. We argue, in contrast, that these events may be Type Ib/c SNe with typical masses and energies (M ∼ 3 M_⊙, E ∼ 1 B), but which ejected very little radioactive material. In our picture, the light curve is powered by the diffusion of thermal energy deposited by the explosion shock wave, and the rapid evolution is due to recombination, which reduces the opacity and results in an ‘oxygen-plateau’ light curve. Using a radiative transfer code and simple 1D ejecta profiles, we generate synthetic spectra and light curves and demonstrate that this model can reasonably fit the observations of one event, SN 2010X. Similar models may explain the features of other rapidly evolving SNe such as SN 2002bj and SN 2005ek. SNe such as these may require stripped-envelope progenitors with rather large radii (R ∼ 20 R_⊙), which may originate from a mass-loss episode occurring just prior to explosion

Employee reactions to planned organizational culture change: A configurational perspective

Supplementary Material is available online at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00187267231183305#supplementary-materials .Konstantinos Tasoulis is grateful to his mentor, Professor John Purcell, to the John Lewis Partnership, and all Partners who participated in the study.Copyright © The Author(s) 2023. Can organizational culture be intentionally changed? And if so, what are the pathways to success versus failure? We address these questions by employing a configurational perspective, which allows us to examine the impact of multiple combinations of employee perceptions and traits on planned organizational culture change. Although employees have long been the focus of culture change research, the complex interactions of factors affecting their reactions have been largely ignored. With such a focus, the study empirically identifies pathways to successful versus failed organizational culture change, drawing rare empirical evidence from 59 interviews and secondary data from one of the longest surviving examples of industrial democracy, John Lewis Partnership, which underwent change geared away from a ‘civil-service’ towards a high-performance culture. Applying a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), we identify multiple equifinal combinations of employee perceptions and traits (e.g., perceived organizational support, empowerment, and tenure) associated with successful or failed organizational culture change. Interestingly, we find more pathways leading to positive (i.e., ‘comparing’, ‘acquitting’, and ‘tolerating’) versus negative (i.e., ‘disillusioning’ and ‘dissociating’) reactions to culture change. We leverage these findings to show that employee reactions are more complex than currently considered, illustrating the value of a configurational perspective in such efforts.Konstantinos Tasoulis acknowledges the generous support of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation. The open-access publication of this article was supported by the Onassis Scholars’ Association. Pavlos Vlachos wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Theodore Papalexopoulos Chair in Sustainability Fund