Accreditation of practice educators: An expectation too far ?

The successful completion of practice placements is essential to the education of occupational therapists; however, ensuring quality placements is challenging for occupational therapy educators. In 2000, Brunel University introduced a revised system of accreditation of practice educators which involved attendance at a course, the supervision of a student and the submission of an essay to be assessed. An audit revealed that a total of 314 therapists attended 15 courses between 2000 and 2003; of these, 243 (77%) subsequently supervised students and 32 (10%) became accredited. The requirement to accredit practice educators, which is a commendable attempt to ensure quality, may paradoxically have been detrimental in achieving quality. The College of Occupational Therapists’ apparent change of emphasis on this topic is welcome

Occupational therapists' perceptions of predischarge home assessments with older adults in acute care

Predischarge occupational therapy home assessments are routinely performed with older adults in Europe, Australia and North America. Their primary aim is to facilitate a timely and safe discharge from hospital. However, there is a lack of published research on this topic, especially studies exploring occupational therapists' perceptions of home assessments. The paper aims to redress this by describing occupational therapists' perceptions of predischarge occupational therapy home assessments with older adults in acute care. All occupational therapists who undertook home assessments in an acute care hospital with older adults during the duration of the study period were invited to complete a reflective diary. In total, 15 reflective diaries were completed by six therapists. The data were analysed using thematic content analysis. The findings suggest that home assessments were carried out because of mobility or environmental concerns. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the outcome of the home assessment were related to the incidents that occurred during the assessment. Some of the occupational therapists' anxieties were related to the older adults' level of functioning or ill health, and the older adults' own concerns did have an impact upon the therapists' expectations of the home assessment process

Fluorine gas as a cleaning agent for Apollo bulk-sample containers

A technique has been developed for cleaning Apollo bulk sample containers using fluorine gas as the cleaning agent

An Argentine Child’s Wake, with Music and Dancing – As seen by Alfred Ébélot and R. B. Cunninghame Graham

The French engineer Alfred Ébélot in 1870s Argentina helped lay out a ditch 300-plus kilometres long across the grasslands – the pampa – of the huge Province of Buenos Aires. This was to hinder Indian raiders seeking to make off south with white captives and huge numbers of animals. Somewhere Ébélot witnessed a traditional child’s wake, accompanied by music and dancing. Graham, fluent Spanish speaker and expert horseman, was in the 1870s utterly captivated by the unfenced pampa and by its cow-herders, the gauchos. He too witnessed a child’s wake with music and dancing. “El Velorio” (The Wake), the first of Ébélot’s vignettes in La Pampa (1890), describes such a child’s wake. In 1894 W. H. Hudson, the Argentine-born naturalist and author, recommended La Pampa to his friend Graham, advising him to switch his writing focus to short sketches based on his pampa experiences. In 1899, Graham’s “El Angelito” (The Little Angel) is a five-part description of a child’s wake very similar in design to Ébélot’s “El Velorio”. Ébélot, a positivist, is more critical than Graham of the commercialisation of the child’s wake tradition. Graham’s passion for the pampa and especially his ability to highlight compelling details give the literary edge to Graham’s sketch. Ébélot’s La Pampa proved a useful help to Graham in his rapid development in the late 1890s as a writer of literary sketches. In 1870, two foreigners landed in Argentina for the first time – the Frenchman Alfred Ébélot and the Scotsman Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham. In different places each witnessed a traditional child’s wake accompanied by music and dancing. This article compares their experiences of Argentina and their literary interpretations of an intriguing piece of Hispano-Argentine folklore

Restoration of eucalypt grassy woodland: effects of experimental interventions on ground-layer vegetation

We report on the effects of broad-scale restoration treatments on the ground layer of eucalypt grassy woodland in south-eastern Australia. The experiment was conducted in two conservation reserves from which livestock grazing had previously been removed. Changes in biomass, species diversity, ground-cover attributes and life-form were analysed over a 4-year period in relation to the following experimental interventions: (1) reduced kangaroo density, (2) addition of coarse woody debris and (3) fire (a single burn). Reducing kangaroo density doubled total biomass in one reserve, but no effects on exotic biomass, species counts or ground cover attributes were observed. Coarse woody debris also promoted biomass, particularly exotic annual forbs, as well as plant diversity in one of the reserves. The single burn reduced biomass, but changed little else. Overall, we found the main driver of change to be the favourable growth seasons that had followed a period of drought. This resulted in biomass increasing by 67%, (mostly owing to the growth of perennial native grasses), whereas overall native species counts increased by 18%, and exotic species declined by 20% over the 4-year observation period. Strategic management of grazing pressure, use of fire where biomass has accumulated and placement of coarse woody debris in areas of persistent erosion will contribute to improvements in soil and vegetation condition, and gains in biodiversity, in the future.Funding and in-kind logistic support for this project was provided by the ACT Government as part of an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (LP0561817; LP110100126). Drafts of the manuscript were read by Saul Cunningham and Ben Macdonald

Forward Pointing Introductory Formulas in the Gospel of Matthew: A Solution to One of Matthew’s Most Problematic Scripture Citations

This paper will seek to interpret one of the most problematic passages in intertextual studies. Matthew 2:23 does not have a clear Old Testament referent, and this presents a problem. How can an unknown prophecy be fulfilled; where is the text cited to be found? However, by keeping the original in mind during interpretation, it seems that Matthew was intentionally creating a hermeneutic of suspicion creating a deliberate rhetorical effect. This paper will seek to determine how Matthew artistically arranged and derived the significance of the Old Testament for his contemporary readership in light of the Christ event. It will be argued that the unknown citation of Matthew 2:19-23 can be found in the next identical citation formula resolving the suspense created by the allusion citation of Matthew 2:23 highlighting the narrative material between the two passages as a sort of inclusio

Matthew Doesn’t Mean What You Think He Means, and Why It\u27s Significant: A Form Critical Evaluation of Plēroō’s relation to Pesher Formulas and its Solution to an Age-Old Problem

This paper will evaluate Matthew 2:13-15 analyzing Matthew’s questionable use of Hosea 11:1. Turner has noted that, “Those who think that Matthew saw a prediction of Jesus in Hos. 11:1 must either disparage Matthew’s hermeneutic . . . or attribute to Matthew revelatory insight into the sensus plenior of Hosea” (Turner, 2008). While the majority of commentators have found Matthew to be practicing typological interpretation, there has been a neglect to analyze the structure of Matthew’s particular introductory formula since Stendahl (1968), which have led many to see a pesher employment by Matthew in these formulas. This paper evaluates the form of Matthew’s quotations in light of persher forms, ultimately finding that Matthew has inverted the form. This inverted form shows that Matthew was seeking to interpret his current situation in light of the scriptures, and not to interpret scriptures at all. This difference is pivotal to see, since it validates Matthew’s use of the Old Testament in πληρόω formulas because he is giving a contemporary significance of how a text affects his current situation, and not reinterpreting meaning into that text from his new situation. This confusion between meaning and significance has proliferated interpretations, and has been a problem that Walter C. Kaiser and E. D. Hirsch have sought to remedy, but has not yet been fruitful for interpretations in Matthew’s use of the Old Testament