The politics of the teaching of reading

Historically, political debates have broken out over how to teach reading in primary schools and infant classrooms. These debates and “reading wars” have often resulted from public concerns and media reportage of a fall in reading standards. They also reflect the importance placed on learning to read by parents, teachers, employers, and politicians. Public and media-driven controversies over the teaching of reading have resulted in intense public and professional debates over which specific methods and materials to use with beginning readers and with children who have reading difficulties. Recently, such debates have led to a renewed emphasis on reading proficiency and “standardized” approaches to teaching reading and engaging with literacy. The universal acceptance of the importance of learning to read has also led to vested interests in specific methods, reading programmes, and early literacy assessments amongst professional, business, commercial, and parental lobbying groups. This article traces these debates and the resulting growing support for a quantitative reductionist approach to early-reading programmes

The ATLAS SCT Optoelectronics and the Associated Electrical Services

The requirements for the optical links of the ATLAS SCT are described. From the individual detector modules to the first patch panel, the electrical services are integrated with the optical links to aid in mechanical design, construction and integration. The system architecture and critical elements of the system are described. The optical links for the ATLAS SCT have been assembled and mounted onto the carbon fibre support structures. The performance of the system as measured during QA is summarised and compared to the final performance obtained after mounting modules onto the support structures

Moving Forward in Fostering Humour: Towards Training Lighter Forms of Humour in Multicultural Contexts

The following theoretical position paper has the aim to outline two important future directions of humour intervention research. Firstly, existing humour trainings have not differentiated explicitly between different uses of humour or humour that may be virtuous or not. Within the realm of Positive Psychology, all virtuous forms of humour need to be identified and interventions developed that aim at fostering these benevolent/lighter forms. Secondly, most humour trainings have been adapted and conducted in one cultural context. Future trainings should consider cross-cultural perspectives to allow for comparative research and practice. Thus, the current paper first gives an overview on the extant literature on the distinction between lighter and darker forms of humour, as well as showing how humour can serve the virtues proposed by Peterson and Seligman (2004). Then, we elaborate on the findings on humour and well-being, as well as findings on existing humour interventions. The second section starts with open questions and hypotheses on how a new generation of trainings targeting lighter forms of humour could look like. Then, we discuss (potential) cultural differences in humour and how this may affect the design of interventions. When aiming for cross-cultural adaptations of the same humour program, several challenges have to be overcome, such as the term “humour” not having the same meaning in every culture, and cultural rules on what can be laughed at

Whistleblowing: Incentives and Situational Determinants

Law makers increasingly try to capitalize on individuals having acquired knowledge of corporate crimes or other misconduct by inducing them to blow the whistle. In a laboratory experiment we measure the effectiveness of incentives on the willingness to report such misconduct to a sanctioning authority. We find that fines for non-reporting insiders, rewards and even simple commands increase the probability of whistleblowing. We find the strongest effect for fines. Situational determinants also influence the willingness to blow the whistle: Insiders who are negatively affected by the misconduct are more likely to blow the whistle than non-affected or profiting insiders. Those (negatively affected) victims are also sensitive to the misconduct's impact on the authority sanctioning the misconduct (public authority or employer): Whistleblowing is more likely if the enforcement authority is negatively affected compared to positively or not affected.November 201

Ion-association: Models and thermodynamics

Association reactions are an important class for probing ion-water and water-water interactions. A review of some earlier results led to a model of ion-association reactions discussed by Mesmer et al. in Activity Coefficients of Electrolyte Solutions in 1991. Additional results especially from electrical conductance studies on acids and salts will be discussed. There is mounting evidence consistent with the general observations regarding the temperature and pressure dependencies for thermodynamic quantities for association reactions seen earlier including the driving force, T{Delta}S, that originates from the release of ion hydrate waters when pairing occurs. The density model for log K{sub A} serves well as a simple representation of the strong variation with temperature and pressure seen for these reactions. The decrease in solvent structure with increasing temperature and the increasing range of the ion-dipole interactions for hydrated ions (with decreasing dielectric constant) are thought to be the principal factors accounting for the dramatic trends seen for the thermodynamic quantities. Some discussion will be given of the simplicity found for the T-P dependencies for {delta}U{sub v} and {delta}C{sub v}, the changes in internal energy and heat capacity on a constant volume basis

Experimental studies in high temperature aqueous chemistry at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Experimental research is conducted and models developed in a long- standing program at Oak Ridge on aqueous chemistry at high temperatures of broad classes of electrolytes emphasizing thermodynamics of reaction equilibria and excess thermodynamic properties of electrolytes. Experimental methods, their capabilities, data analysis, and results are summarized. Relevance of the work to problems in power plants, natural and industrial processes as well as basic solution chemistry and geochemistry are given. Progress in potentiometry, electrical conductivity, flow calorimetry, and isopiestic research is described. Future in this field demands greater precision in measurements and significant gains in our understanding of the solvation phenomena especially in the vicinity and beyond the critical point for water. The communities who do research on scattering, spectroscopy, and computer simulations can help guide these efforts through studies at extreme conditions