Engaging children in meaningful charity: opening-up the spaces within which children learn to give

This paper presents qualitative evidence from an in-depth, participative action research project with 150 children aged 4-8 years old, exploring their experiences, perceptions and preferences regarding charitable giving. Most children positively engage in charitable giving through home, school and their community, however less than 20% are aware of the cause area they are being asked to support, and most have little decision-making in their giving. Children’s willingness to engage increases when they critically examine the cause area and are facilitated to lead on giving decisions, often resulting in increased and sustained efforts to support cause areas that matter to them

Predicting Academic Performance: A Systematic Literature Review

The ability to predict student performance in a course or program creates opportunities to improve educational outcomes. With effective performance prediction approaches, instructors can allocate resources and instruction more accurately. Research in this area seeks to identify features that can be used to make predictions, to identify algorithms that can improve predictions, and to quantify aspects of student performance. Moreover, research in predicting student performance seeks to determine interrelated features and to identify the underlying reasons why certain features work better than others. This working group report presents a systematic literature review of work in the area of predicting student performance. Our analysis shows a clearly increasing amount of research in this area, as well as an increasing variety of techniques used. At the same time, the review uncovered a number of issues with research quality that drives a need for the community to provide more detailed reporting of methods and results and to increase efforts to validate and replicate work.Peer reviewe

Is hypofractionated reirradiation effective after symptomatic local recurrence in non-small cell lung cancer?

Purpose: To evaluate retrospectively the treatment results of recurrent non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with second-line hypofractionated radiotherapy. Patients and methods: Twenty-five patients with locally advanced NSCLC and symptomatic local recurrence after primary hypofractionated radiotherapy, were retreated with second-line hypofractionated irradiation between July 1991 and April 1999. Maximum effort was undertaken to protect normal lung tissue with careful simulations, limited safety margins and customized blocking. The spinal cord was excluded with parallelly opposed isocentric oblique fields in central tumors. Total doses ranging between 2000-3000 cGy (median 2500 cGy) were delivered in 5-15 fractions. Nine patients were administered systemic chemotherapy (CT) before reirradiation. Survival analysis and subjective response rates were evaluated according to starting dates of both radiotherapy courses and clinical improvement in symptomatology, respectively. Results: Median follow-up time was 48 weeks (range 13-121 weeks). The mean time-interval between the two radiotherapy courses was 32 weeks (range 4-65 weeks). Overall improvement in symptomatology was found to be 72.7% (32 out of 44 patients), with a complete response rate of 38.6% (17 out of 44 patients). Hemoptysis was the best palliated symptom. Overall and post-reirradiation median survival times were found to be 48 and 17 weeks, respectively. The majority of patients were regularly followed-up until death. No Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) toxicity grades III-IV were registered. Conclusion: Even though this is a retrospective study containing a small number of patients, hypofractionated reirradiation appears to be safe and effective in palliating symptoms related to NSCLC and prolonged survival can be offered

Experimental investigation and prediction of mechanical properties of friction stir welded aluminium metal matrix composite plates

Friction stir welding (FSW) is a relatively contemporary solid state welding process and has been employed in aerospace, railway, automotive and marine industries for joining of aluminum, magnesium, zinc, titanium, copper alloys, dissimilar metals and thermoplastics. The FSW process parameters such as tool rotation speed, tool traverse speed and tilt angle play an important role in deciding the joining quality. The present study defines the effect of FSW process on the tensile properties of the AA2124/SiC/25p metal matrix composite (MMC) plates. Obtained results showed that the joint efficiency decreases by increasing the tool traverse speed while tool rotation speed was kept constant. Second contribution of this study is the application of decision tree technique to predict the tensile properties of friction stir welded MMC plates. It is seen that methodology can be applied with great accuracy.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ms.18.4.3092</p

Validation of the Medical Research Council and a newly developed prognostic index in patients with malignant glioma: How useful are prognostic indices in routine clinical practice?

Although different prognostic indices for malignant gliomas have been developed, their validity outside of clinical trials has not been widely tested. The aim of this study was to determine whether the Medical Research Council (MRC) brain tumour prognostic index was able to stratify patients for survival managed in routine practice, and secondly to compare the results with our newly developed prognostic score which included tumour grade and only 3 prognostic groups. The MRC and the new prognostic index were calculated for a group of 119 adult patients with malignant glioma managed by surgical resection/biopsy and post-operative radiotherapy. For the MRC and new score, 6 and 3 prognostic groups were defined, respectively. For all patients median survival was 11 (2-66) months. The overall survival rate at 12 and 24 months were 43% and 18%, respectively. The MRC median and two-year survival rates were 14 months and 26% for a score of 1-10, 14 months and 27% for a score of 11-15, 13 months and 22% for a score of 16-20, 8 months and 10% for a score of 21-25, 8 months and 0% for those scoring 26-33. There was only one patient in the 34-38 group. For the new prognostic index, median and two-year survival rates were respectively 16 and 26%; 12 and 23%; 8 and 7% for the good, intermediate and poor prognostic groups. Both indices were significant factors for survival in univariate analysis (MRC index, p = 0.0089, new index p = 0.0002), but not in multivariate analysis. Both the MRC and our newly devised prognostic score were able to separate patients into good and poor prognostic groups, which may aid in treatment decisions, although there was less differentiation between the MRC groups especially over the first year. Both scores use routinely available factors. However, inclusion of tumour grade in the new score may be an advantage over the MRC index