Evidence of quality professional development:a study in childhood practice

Peer reviewedPostprin

Categorias da motivação na aprendizagem

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Garduação em Engenharia de Produção.Trata-se de um estudo do construto motivacional no campo da psicologia e das ciências da educação. O trabalho parte da análise crítica das teorias motivacionais, principalmente no que se refere aos aspectos da dicotomia entre o carácter intrínseco e extrínseco da motivação. Os elementos associados à lógica da recompensa são analisados como impedidores da motivação. A teoria psicanalítica e o cognitivismo sustentam a hipóteses da constituição do fenômeno motivacional a partir das categorias pulsional e cognitiva. A categoria social irrompe na construção teórica como a finalidade última da motivação. Do desenvolvimento teórico resulta o quadro hipotético de categorias e fatores da motivação na aprendizagem que serve de parâmetro à pesquisa empírica. Os elementos metodológico-epistêmicos e metodológico-técnicos são discutidos à luz da visão qualitativa de investigação. Através da interpretação social dos discursos (nível de aproximação das abordagens da análise do discurso), tornou-se possível a reformulação do quadro hipotético de categorias e fatores da motivação na aprendizagem, bem como, a definição dos fatores com base na sua forma de atuação nos discurso

Sidney Homer, song composer

Sidney Homer, in his autobiography, stated that it is not the amount of art America has produced which is the phenomenon but the amount of art that it has left unnoticed.1 In a land as creatively energetic as America, perhaps the quantity of contemporary music makes it all too easy for us to forget the art of our immediate past. At any rate, much of our heritage of fine music has been forgotten

Adoptive transfer of cytomegalovirus-specific CTL to stem cell transplant patients after selection by HLA–peptide tetramers

Stem cell transplantation is used widely in the management of a range of diseases of the hemopoietic system. Patients are immunosuppressed profoundly in the early posttransplant period, and reactivation of cytomegalovirus (CMV) remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Adoptive transfer of donor-derived CMV-specific CD8(+) T cell clones has been shown to reduce the rate of viral reactivation; however, the complexity of this approach severely limits its clinical application. We have purified CMV-specific CD8(+) T cells from the blood of stem cell transplant donors using staining with HLA-peptide tetramers followed by selection with magnetic beads. CMV-specific CD8(+) cells were infused directly into nine patients within 4 h of selection. Median cell dosage was 8.6 x 10(3)/kg with a purity of 98% of all T cells. CMV-specific CD8(+) T cells became detectable in all patients within 10 d of infusion, and TCR clonotype analysis showed persistence of infused cells in two patients studied. CMV viremia was reduced in every case and eight patients cleared the infection, including one patient who had a prolonged history of CMV infection that was refractory to antiviral therapy. This novel approach to adoptive transfer has considerable potential for antigen-specific T cell therapy

The development of sentence-interpretation strategies in monolingual German-learning children with and without specific language impairment

Previous research on sentence comprehension conducted with German-learning children has concentrated on the role of case marking and word order in typically developing children. This paper compares, the performance of German-learning children with language impairment (age 4-6 years) and without language impairment (aged 2-6, 8-9 years) in two experiments that systematically vary the cues animacy, case marking; word-order, and subject-verb agreement. The two experiments differ with regard to the choice of case marking: in the first it is distinct but in the second it is neutralized. The theoretical framework is the competition model developed by Bates and Mac Whinney and their collaborators, a variant of the parallel distributed processing models. It is hypothesized that children of either population first appreciate the cue animacy that can be processed locally, that is, "on the spot," before they turn to more distributed cues leading ultimately up to subject-verb agreement, which presupposes the comparison of various constituents before an interpretation can be established. Thus agreement is more "costly" in processing than animacy or the (more) local cue initial NP. In experiment I with unambiguous case markers it is shown that the typically developing children proceed from animacy to the nominative (predominantly in coalition with the initial NP) to agreement, while in the second experiment with ambiguous case markers these children turn from animacy to the initial NP and then to agreement. The impaired children also progress from local to distributed cues. Yet, in contrast to the control group, they do not acknowledge the nominative in coalition with the initial NP in the first experiment but only in support of agreement. However, although they do not seem to appreciate distinct case markers to any large extent in the first experiment, they are irritated if such distinctions are lacking: in experiment II all impaired children turn to. animacy (some in coalition with the initial NP and/or particular word orders). In the discussion, the relationship between short-term memory and processing as well as the relationship between production and comprehension of case markers and agreement are addressed. Further research is needed to explore in more detail "cue costs" in sentence comprehension

Small-Molecule Screen Identifies Reactive Oxygen Species as Key Regulators of Neutrophil Chemotaxis

Neutrophil chemotaxis plays an essential role in innate immunity, but the underlying cellular mechanism is still not fully characterized. Here, using a small-molecule functional screening, we identified NADPH oxidase–dependent reactive oxygen species as key regulators of neutrophil chemotactic migration. Neutrophils with pharmacologically inhibited oxidase, or isolated from chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) patients and mice, formed more frequent multiple pseudopodia and lost their directionality as they migrated up a chemoattractant concentration gradient. Knocking down NADPH oxidase in differentiated neutrophil-like HL60 cells also led to defective chemotaxis. Consistent with the in vitro results, adoptively transferred CGD murine neutrophils showed impaired in vivo recruitment to sites of inflammation. Together, these results present a physiological role for reactive oxygen species in regulating neutrophil functions and shed light on the pathogenesis of CGD

Parental phonological memory contributes to prediction of outcome of late talkers from 20 months to 4 years: a longitudinal study of precursors of specific language impairment

Background Many children who are late talkers go on to develop normal language, but others go on to have longer-term language difficulties. In this study, we considered which factors were predictive of persistent problems in late talkers. Methods Parental report of expressive vocabulary at 18 months of age was used to select 26 late talkers and 70 average talkers, who were assessed for language and cognitive ability at 20 months of age. Follow-up at 4 years of age was carried out for 24 late and 58 average talkers. A psychometric test battery was used to categorize children in terms of language status (unimpaired or impaired) and nonverbal ability (normal range or more than 1 SD below average). The vocabulary and non-word repetition skills of the accompanying parent were also assessed. Results Among the late talkers, seven (29%) met our criteria for specific language impairment (SLI) at 4 years of age, and a further two (8%) had low nonverbal ability. In the group of average talkers, eight (14%) met the criteria for SLI at 4 years, and five other children (8%) had low nonverbal ability. Family history of language problems was slightly better than late-talker status as a predictor of SLI.. The best predictors of SLI at 20 months of age were score on the receptive language scale of the Mullen Scales of Early Learning and the parent's performance on a non-word repetition task. Maternal education was not a significant predictor of outcome. Conclusions In this study, around three-quarters of late talkers did not have any language difficulties at 4 years of age, provided there was no family history of language impairment. A family history of language-literacy problems was found to be a significant predictor for persisting problems. Nevertheless, there are children with SLI for whom prediction is difficult because they did not have early language delay