Race and sex: teachers' views on who gets ahead in schools?

The research reported here was part of a large study of the impact of age, disability, race and sex on the teaching profession in England. The basic question asked in this research was how do these factors interact with career aspirations and achievements of classteachers, promoted teachers and headteachers? There were three different data sources: a large postal survey drawn from diverse geographic regions across England with over 2000 respondents; face‐to‐face individual interviews with over 100 teachers in 18 case study schools from across all of the main regions of England; discussions with special interest groups of teachers. Not surprisingly, the answer to the above question was complex. Nonetheless, the paper's conclusion highlights some of the noteworthy themes across this broad sample of teachers from primary, secondary and special schools

Reducing prolonged sedentary time using a treadmill desk acutely improves cardiometabolic risk markers in male and female adults

The objectives of this study were to evaluate the acute effects of interrupting prolonged sitting with an accumulated 2 h of light-intensity walking on postprandial cardiometabolic risk markers. In this randomised crossover trial, 24 participants (twelve males) aged 18-55 years took part in two, 6.5 h conditions: 1) prolonged sitting (SIT) and 2) sitting interrupted hourly with 20 min light-intensity treadmill desk walking at between 1.2-3.5 km/h-1 (INT-SIT). Standardized meals were provided at 0 h and 3 h. Blood samples and blood pressure measures were taken hourly. Statistical analyses were completed using linear mixed models. Postprandial incremental area under the curve responses (mmol/L∙6.5 h) for glucose (4.52 [3.47, 5.56] and 6.66 [5.62, 7.71] for INT-SIT and SIT, respectively) and triglycerides (1.96 [0.96, 2.96] and 2.71 [1.70, 3.71] mmol/L∙6.5 h, for INT-SIT and SIT, respectively) were significantly lower in INT-SIT than SIT. Mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure responses were lower by 3% and 4%, respectively, in INT-SIT than SIT (P0.05). These findings suggest that interrupting sitting with an accumulated 2 h of light-intensity walking acutely improves cardiometabolic risk levels in males and females compared with prolonged sitting

Cognitive tests used in chronic adult human randomised controlled trial micronutrient and phytochemical intervention studies

In recent years there has been a rapid growth of interest in exploring the relationship between nutritional therapies and the maintenance of cognitive function in adulthood. Emerging evidence reveals an increasingly complex picture with respect to the benefits of various food constituents on learning, memory and psychomotor function in adults. However, to date, there has been little consensus in human studies on the range of cognitive domains to be tested or the particular tests to be employed. To illustrate the potential difficulties that this poses, we conducted a systematic review of existing human adult randomised controlled trial (RCT) studies that have investigated the effects of 24 d to 36 months of supplementation with flavonoids and micronutrients on cognitive performance. There were thirty-nine studies employing a total of 121 different cognitive tasks that met the criteria for inclusion. Results showed that less than half of these studies reported positive effects of treatment, with some important cognitive domains either under-represented or not explored at all. Although there was some evidence of sensitivity to nutritional supplementation in a number of domains (for example, executive function, spatial working memory), interpretation is currently difficult given the prevailing 'scattergun approach' for selecting cognitive tests. Specifically, the practice means that it is often difficult to distinguish between a boundary condition for a particular nutrient and a lack of task sensitivity. We argue that for significant future progress to be made, researchers need to pay much closer attention to existing human RCT and animal data, as well as to more basic issues surrounding task sensitivity, statistical power and type I error

Enabling Personalized Process Schedules with Time-aware Process Views

Companies increasingly adopt process-aware information systems (PAISs) to model, enact, monitor, and evolve their business processes. Although the proper handling of temporal constraints (e.g., deadlines and minimum time lags between activities) is crucial for many application domains, existing PAISs vary significantly regarding the support of the temporal perspective of a business process. In previous work, we introduced characteristic time patterns for specifying the temporal perspective of PAISs. However, time-aware process schemas might be complex and hard to understand for end-users. To enable their proper visualization, therefore, this paper introduces an approach for transforming time-aware process schemas into enhanced Gantt charts. Based on this, a method for creating personalized process schedules using process views is suggested. Overall, the presented approach enables users to easily understand and monitor time-aware processes in PAISs

Development of a mechanism to facilitate the safety stock planning configuration in ERP

Safety stock planning in ERP in general is dependent upon the planner having the experience to simulate planning scenarios. This paper focuses on the development of a mechanism to calculate adequate safety stocks in accordance with required service levels while enabling efficient configuration of the ERP safety stock parameters. The proposed mechanism could be of great benefit to industrial firms as it offers the ability to classify demand patterns, proposes replenishment strategies that are consistent with the demand profile, calculates key parameters and identifies the changes required to the ERP master data. The associated real world application is able to identify potential to save approximately £1.2 M in stock reductions and, more importantly, allows targeted actions to be implemented at material level. These results demonstrated that the proposed mechanism can be considered as a valuable new development for manufacturing industry to gain the competitive advantage

Transparent Meta-Analysis: Does Aging Spare Prospective Memory with Focal vs. Non-Focal Cues?

Background: Prospective memory (ProM) is the ability to become aware of a previously-formed plan at the right time and place. For over twenty years, researchers have been debating whether prospective memory declines with aging or whether it is spared by aging and, most recently, whether aging spares prospective memory with focal vs. non-focal cues. Two recent meta-analyses examining these claims did not include all relevant studies and ignored prevalent ceiling effects, age confounds, and did not distinguish between prospective memory subdomains (e.g., ProM proper, vigilance, habitual ProM) (see Uttl, 2008, PLoS ONE). The present meta-analysis focuses on the following questions: Does prospective memory decline with aging? Does prospective memory with focal vs. non-focal cues decline with aging? Does the size of age-related declines with focal vs. non-focal cues vary across ProM subdomains? And are age-related declines in ProM smaller than agerelated declines in retrospective memory? Methods and Findings: A meta-analysis of event-cued ProM using data visualization and modeling, robust count methods, and conventional meta-analysis techniques revealed that first, the size of age-related declines in ProM with both focal and non-focal cues are large. Second, age-related declines in ProM with focal cues are larger in ProM proper and smaller in vigilance. Third, age-related declines in ProM proper with focal cues are as large as age-related declines in recall measures of retrospective memory

Transparent Meta-Analysis of Prospective Memory and Aging

Prospective memory (ProM) refers to our ability to become aware of a previously formed plan at the right time and place. After two decades of research on prospective memory and aging, narrative reviews and summaries have arrived at widely different conclusions. One view is that prospective memory shows large age declines, larger than age declines on retrospective memory (RetM). Another view is that prospective memory is an exception to age declines and remains invariant across the adult lifespan. The present meta-analysis of over twenty years of research settles this controversy. It shows that prospective memory declines with aging and that the magnitude of age decline varies by prospective memory subdomain (vigilance, prospective memory proper, habitual prospective memory) as well as test setting (laboratory, natural). Moreover, this meta-analysis demonstrates that previous claims of no age declines in prospective memory are artifacts of methodological and conceptual issues afflicting prior research including widespread ceiling effects, low statistical power, age confounds, and failure to distinguish between various subdomains of prospective memory (e.g., vigilance and prospective memory proper)

'Just open your eyes a bit more': The methodological challenges of researching black and minority ethnic students' experiences of physical education teacher education

In this paper we discuss some of the challenges of centralising 'race' and ethnicity in Physical Education (PE) research, through reflecting on the design and implementation of a study exploring Black and minority ethnic students' experiences of their teacher education. Our aim in the paper is to contribute to ongoing theoretical and methodological debates about intersectionality, and specifically about difference and power in the research process. As McCorkel and Myers notes, the 'researchers' backstage'-the assumptions, motivations, narratives and relations-that underpin any research are not always made visible and yet are highly significant in judging the quality and substance of the resulting project. As feminists, we argue that the invisibility of 'race' and ethnicity within Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE), and PE research more widely, is untenable; however, we also show how centralising 'race' and ethnicity raised significant methodological and epistemological questions, particularly given our position as White researchers and lecturers. In this paper, we reflect on a number of aspects of our research 'journey': the theoretical and methodological challenges of operationalising concepts of 'race' and ethnicity, the practical issues and dilemmas involved in recruiting participants for the study, the difficulties of 'talking race' personally and professionally and challenges of representing the experiences of 'others'. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Zinc intake, status and indices of cognitive function in adults and children: a systematic review and meta-analysis

In developing countries, deficiencies of micronutrients are thought to have a major impact on child development; however, a consensus on the specific relationship between dietary zinc intake and cognitive function remains elusive. The aim of this systematic review was to examine the relationship between zinc intake, status and indices of cognitive function in children and adults. A systematic literature search was conducted using EMBASE, MEDLINE and Cochrane Library databases from inception to March 2014. Included studies were those that supplied zinc as supplements or measured dietary zinc intake. A meta-analysis of the extracted data was performed where sufficient data were available. Of all of the potentially relevant papers, 18 studies met the inclusion criteria, 12 of which were randomised controlled trials (RCTs; 11 in children and 1 in adults) and 6 were observational studies (2 in children and 4 in adults). Nine of the 18 studies reported a positive association between zinc intake or status with one or more measure of cognitive function. Meta-analysis of data from the adult’s studies was not possible because of limited number of studies. A meta-analysis of data from the six RCTs conducted in children revealed that there was no significant overall effect of zinc intake on any indices of cognitive function: intelligence, standard mean difference of <0.001 (95% confidence interval (CI) –0.12, 0.13) P=0.95; executive function, standard mean difference of 0.08 (95% CI, –0.06, 022) P=0.26; and motor skills standard mean difference of 0.11 (95% CI –0.17, 0.39) P=0.43. Heterogeneity in the study designs was a major limitation, hence only a small number (n=6) of studies could be included in the meta-analyses. Meta-analysis failed to show a significant effect of zinc supplementation on cognitive functioning in children though, taken as a whole, there were some small indicators of improvement on aspects of executive function and motor development following supplementation but high-quality RCTs are necessary to investigate this further

Gender and sexual orientation differences in cognition across adulthood : age is kinder to women than to men regardless of sexual orientation

Despite some evidence of greater age-related deterioration of the brain in males than in females, gender differences in rates of cognitive aging have proved inconsistent. The present study employed web-based methodology to collect data from people aged 20-65 years (109,612 men; 88,509 women). As expected, men outperformed women on tests of mental rotation and line angle judgment, whereas women outperformed men on tests of category fluency and object location memory. Performance on all tests declined with age but significantly more so for men than for women. Heterosexuals of each gender generally outperformed bisexuals and homosexuals on tests where that gender was superior; however, there were no clear interactions between age and sexual orientation for either gender. At least for these particular tests from young adulthood to retirement, age is kinder to women than to men, but treats heterosexuals, bisexuals, and homosexuals just the same