Research Notes : Greenhouse determination of soybean tolerance to phytophthora rot

One method of determing field tolerance of soybeans to Phytophthora mega-sperma f. sp. glycinea (Hildeb.) Kaun & Erwin (Pmg) is to determine the percent of plant loss from emergence to maturity for cultivars grown in an infested field under conditions favorable for the disease (Buzzell and Anderson, 1982). Drawing upon the field results and the results of two unpublished greenhouse experiments (given below), a greenhouse technique similar to the field test was developed. 1962 Experiment : Cores of soil were obtained from a field known to be in-fested with Pmg race 1, the field having been used in a previous study (Ful-ton et al., 1961)

Geochemical constraints on the origin of enigmatic cemented chalks, Norfolk, UK

Very hard cemented chalk stacks and crusts found locally in the upper part of the Cretaceous Chalk of north Norfolk, UK, are related to solution features. The solution features, mainly pipes and caves, formed after deposition of the overlying Middle Pleistocene Wroxham Crag, probably by routing of sub-glacial, or glacial, melt-waters derived from late Pleistocene glaciers. New geochemical (particularly stable isotope) data shows that cementation of the chalks, although related spatially to the solution features, was not caused by glacier-derived waters. The carbon isotope composition of the chalk cements is typically around -9.5‰, indicative of biologically active soils. Moreover, the oxygen isotope compositions of the cements, around -5‰, are incompatible with water d18O values much below -9 to -10‰ (which probably precludes isotopically negative glacier-derived water), as resulting palaeo-temperatures are below zero. Taken together, the isotope data suggest chalk cementation occurred under interglacial conditions similar to the present. Dissolved calcium carbonate for cementation came from dissolution of reworked chalk in overlying MIS 12 glacial tills

A-Z of postural care: how to have a good posture when sitting, standing, exercising and relaxing, a guide for teachers and parents and everyone

An A to Z of Postural Care was designed to help those who work with children with postural care needs. It has been written jointly by specialist teachers, therapists and parents of children with physical impairments. The information provided is informed by research that explored the views of teachers and teaching assistants about their experiences of looking after children with physical impairments in mainstream primary schools in Kent. This A to Z booklet aims to give basic information and may act as a starting point for discussions with the therapy team, the child’s family and others in the school. It should link to more general awareness raising within a school of the importance of good posture for learning. The A-Z can be used together with other POSTED training materials to provide the basis for a training programme for parents and teachers. When using/referring to this booklet please acknowledge authorship as appropriate. Details of the other POSTED training resources and publications can be found at CREATE http://create.canterbury.ac.uk/ Hutton, E. and Coxon, K. (2011) Posture for learning: meeting the postural care needs of children with physical disabilities in mainstream primary schools in England - a research into practice exploratory study. Disability and Rehabilitation. 33 (19–20), pp.1012–1924

Adapting to drought in the West African Sahel

In the 1970s and 1980s, a fierce debate took place concerning the vulnerability and adaptive practices of farmers and herders in the West African Sahel, and the utility of concepts including ‘adaptation’ to drought. The region has had the most primary research conducted on drought vulnerability and response, and it is referred to as an archetype, notably in work on human security and famine. Some (eg Michael Watt’s ‘Silent Violence’ 1983) painted a gloomy picture of rural life, with farmers beset by brutal commodity markets and extractive governance stretching back over 100 years. Food shortage and famine was, for Watts, created by colonial policies and unequal access to resources. However others, for example Michael Mortimore (author of ‘Adapting to Drought’ 1989) found regardless of these threats households responded (adapted) to drought in innovative and largely successful ways: diversifying into livestock from farming, moving into labouring and small business activity, and finally considering some temporary outmigration to less affected or more affluent regions to provide remittances. Reversible adaptations occurred before less reversible ones. In this chapter we argue that adaptation is socially mediated, not always successful, and is linked into broader political and economic forces. Its utility as a concept is constrained if wedded to Darwinian uses.’Productive Bricolage’ characterizes livelihoods, with different responses pursued at the same time, and for different lengths of time. Development projects can assist community resilience and individual response to food crises, but in unexpected ways. Our findings from fieldwork in Niger, Burkina and Nigeria are discussed and linked to the new preoccupation of the millennium; ‘climate adaptation’. New research on adaptation in semi arid regions urgently needs to learn from this vast reservoir of contextual knowledge in the African drylands, some of it dating back over 40 years

Towards the production of radiotherapy treatment shells on 3D printers using data derived from DICOM CT and MRI: preclinical feasibility studies

Background: Immobilisation for patients undergoing brain or head and neck radiotherapy is achieved using perspex or thermoplastic devices that require direct moulding to patient anatomy. The mould room visit can be distressing for patients and the shells do not always fit perfectly. In addition the mould room process can be time consuming. With recent developments in three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies comes the potential to generate a treatment shell directly from a computer model of a patient. Typically, a patient requiring radiotherapy treatment will have had a computed tomography (CT) scan and if a computer model of a shell could be obtained directly from the CT data it would reduce patient distress, reduce visits, obtain a close fitting shell and possibly enable the patient to start their radiotherapy treatment more quickly. Purpose: This paper focuses on the first stage of generating the front part of the shell and investigates the dosimetric properties of the materials to show the feasibility of 3D printer materials for the production of a radiotherapy treatment shell. Materials and methods: Computer algorithms are used to segment the surface of the patient’s head from CT and MRI datasets. After segmentation approaches are used to construct a 3D model suitable for printing on a 3D printer. To ensure that 3D printing is feasible the properties of a set of 3D printing materials are tested. Conclusions: The majority of the possible candidate 3D printing materials tested result in very similar attenuation of a therapeutic radiotherapy beam as the Orfit soft-drape masks currently in use in many UK radiotherapy centres. The costs involved in 3D printing are reducing and the applications to medicine are becoming more widely adopted. In this paper we show that 3D printing of bespoke radiotherapy masks is feasible and warrants further investigation

Primary physical education, coaches and continuing professional development

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Sport, Education and Society, 16(4), 485 - 505, 2011, copyright @ Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13573322.2011.589645.Physical education (PE) in primary schools has traditionally been taught by qualified primary teachers. More recently, some teaching of PE in primary schools has been undertaken by coaches (mostly football coaches). These coaches hold national governing body awards but do not hold teaching qualifications. Thus, coaches may not be adequately prepared to teach PE in curriculum time. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the perceptions of a group of community-based football coaches working in primary schools for the impact of a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme on their ability to undertake ‘specified work’ to cover PE in primary schools. The programme focused on four areas identified as important to enable coaches to cover specified work: short- and medium-term planning, pedagogy, knowledge of the curriculum and reflection. Results showed that for the majority of coaches the CPD programme had made them more aware of the importance of these four areas and had helped to develop their knowledge and ability to put this into practice in covering planning, preparation and assessment time. However, further input is still required to develop coaches’ knowledge and understanding in all four areas, but especially their curriculum knowledge, as well as their ability to put these into practice consistently. These findings are discussed in relation to the implications of employing coaches to cover the teaching of PE in primary schools and, if employed, what CPD coaches need to develop the necessary knowledge, skill and understanding for covering specified work in schools

Does gender matter? A cross-national investigation of primary class-room discipline.

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis GroupFewer than 15% of primary school teachers in both Germany and the UK are male. With the on-going international debate about educational performance highlighting the widening gender achievement gap between girl and boy pupils, the demand for more male teachers has become prevalent in educational discourse. Concerns have frequently been raised about the underachievement of boys, with claims that the lack of male ‘role models’ in schools has an adverse effect on boys’ academic motivation and engagement. Although previous research has examined ‘teaching’ as institutional talk, men’s linguistic behaviour in the classroom remains largely ignored, especially in regard to enacting discipline. Using empirical spoken data collected from four primary school classrooms in both the UK and in Germany, this paper examines the linguistic discipline strategies of eight male and eight female teachers using Interactional Sociolinguistics to address the question, does teacher gender matter?Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Sharks of the order Carcharhiniformes from the British Coniacian, Santonian and Campanian (Upper Cretaceous).

Bulk sampling of phosphate-rich horizons within the British Coniacian to Campanian (Upper Cretaceous) yielded very large samples of shark and ray teeth. All of these samples yielded teeth of diverse members of the Carcharhiniformes, which commonly dominate the fauna. The following species are recorded and described: Pseudoscyliorhinus reussi (Herman, 1977) comb. nov., Crassescyliorhinus germanicus (Herman, 1982) gen. nov., Scyliorhinus elongatus (Davis, 1887), Scyliorhinus brumarivulensis sp. nov., ? Palaeoscyllium sp., Prohaploblepharus riegrafi (Müller, 1989) gen. nov., ? Cretascyliorhinus sp., Scyliorhinidae inc. sedis 1, Scyliorhinidae inc. sedis 2, Pteroscyllium hermani sp. nov., Protoscyliorhinus sp., Leptocharias cretaceus sp. nov., Palaeogaleus havreensis Herman, 1977, Paratriakis subserratus sp. nov., Paratriakis tenuis sp. nov., Paratriakis sp. indet. and ? Loxodon sp. Taxa belonging to the families ?Proscylliidae, Leptochariidae, and Carcharhinidae are described from the Cretaceous for the first time. The evolutionary and palaeoecological implications of these newly recognised faunas are discussed