Readiness to Change as a Mediator of the Effect of a Brief Motivational Intervention on Posttreatment Alcohol-Related Consequences of Injured Emergency Department Hazardous Drinkers

Evaluated impact of motivational enhancement (ME) of substance abuse treatment compared to relaxation training (RT) on sex without condoms (overall and involving substance use) 3 months following release among incarcerated adolescents. This randomized clinical trial involved 114 incarcerated adolescents from the Northeast. Regression analyses determined if treatment condition, baseline levels of depressive symptoms, and their interaction predicted condom non-use 3 months post-release, controlling for baseline condom non-use. Among those who reported fewer baseline depressive symptoms, those in ME condition reported significantly less condom non-use, in general and involving marijuana use compared with those in RT condition. Periods of incarceration represent opportunities to help juvenile detainees reduce behaviors that impact their health and the health of those with whom they interact in the community

Patients with Alcohol Problems in the Emergency Department, Part 1: Improving Detection *

Medical and social problems related to alcohol use are frequently seen in the ED. Often, the tempo of emergency medicine practice seems to preclude assessment beyond that required by the acute complaint. However, detection of ED patients with alcohol problems can occur using brief screening tools. This article was developed by members of the SAEM Substance Abuse Task Force, and describes screening tools that have been used successfully to identify atrisk and dependent drinkers. Their brevity, reproducibility, and accuracy vary somewhat, but screening can be realistically performed in the busy ED setting. The early detection of patients with alcohol problems would provide the opportunity for early intervention, and may reduce subsequent morbidity and mortality in this patient population.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72559/1/j.1553-2712.1998.tb02696.x.pd

SEED : Sweden’s English Educational Database for tertiary education: Creating a platform for sharing and collaboration

In this report we describe an attempt to build up an inter-university network among active teachers and students throughout Sweden, its failures and successes, and the general lessons that can be learnt from the experience.NSHU project: Sweden's English Educational Database (SEED) for tertiary education 11/14/2008 by Philip Shaw, Mats Deutschman, Rebecca Hincks, Jean Hudson, David Minugh, Åse Nygren. Article to be submitted to ASLAs Årsbok 2008, based on a presentation at the ALA conference 7-8 November 200

The filling in the sandwich : internal modification of idioms

Idiomatic expressions—defined as (relatively) fixed and semantically opaque units such as 'a one-horse town' or 'buy the farm' (= ‘die’)—are basically self-contained, but can be “anchored” in the discourse at hand via e.g. post-modification: "A great many people thought that the pendulum of permissiveness had swung too far." But internal expansion is also possible: "These dangers are being swept under the risk-factor rug." Using the BNC and newspaper CDs as corpora of sufficient size (approximately 300 million words in all), the patterns and frequency of such anchoring internal expansions in contemporary English are investigated, and compared with those for alternative formulations and the simplex form. Anchoring internal expansion is found to be generally possible, and occasionally inventive, but usually infrequent (with exceptions such as 'not have a leg to stand on'); anchoring the idiom via exemplification in a following clause is a primary discourse alternative.</p

Is <em>Time</em> A’Changin’? [Elektronisk resurs] : A diachronic investigation of the idioms used in <em>Time</em>

A newly-available net-based corpus of 105 million words of written American English (Time Magazine, 1923–2006, at http://corpus.byu.edu/time) was investigated for the occurrence and diachronic distribution of various types of ‘pure’ idioms such as be raining cats and dogs. Idioms from the Collins COBUILD Dictionary of Idioms (2002 (1995)) were selected for four types of variation and change. Group 1, the 46 idioms labeled ‘old-fashioned’, proved to be noticeably more common before 1970. Group 2, several constructions of the type as scarce as X, exhibited considerably more variation than in more diversified corpora such as the British National Corpus. Group 3, Biblically-derived idioms, were generally less common after 1960, but with the lowest frequencies in the 1930s. The frequencies for the final group, 32 idioms focusing on deception, were relatively constant from the 1950s on, with an interesting dip in the 1970s. Changes in editorial policies may possibly have influenced these results. While not of sufficient magnitude for detailed studies of individual items over time, the Time corpus clearly is sufficient to provide us with a great deal of data and numerous valuable insights into the use of these idioms.</p