The Impact of Elementary Mathematics Specialists

Elementary Mathematics Specialists are placed in schools to construct leadership roles and to provide on-site professional development addressing mathematical content and pedagogy in order to enhance instruction and to improve student achievement. A three-year, randomized, control study found that, over time, Specialists had a significant positive impact on student achievement in Grades 3, 4, and 5. This effect on student achievement was not evident at the conclusion of the Specialist\u27s first year of placement. It emerged as knowledgeable Specialists gained experience and as the schools\u27 instructional and administrative staffs learned and worked together. Specialists who were highly engaged with a teacher significantly impacted those teachers\u27 beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning. In addition addition, teachers in schools with a Specialist were more likely to participate in a non-coaching professional activity (attending mathematics-focused grade-level meetings, observing peers\u27 teaching, or attending schoolwide mathematics workshops). The Specialists in this study had substantial programmatic responsibilities that influenced their amount of available time for coaching teachers. Further, the Specialists in this study engaged in a high degree of professional coursework prior to and during at least their first year of placement. Findings should not be generalized to Mathematics Specialists or coaches with less expertise

One-dimensional steady-state thermal model for rotary kilns used in the manufacture of cement

Peer reviewedPostprin

Economic evaluation of a community based exercise programme to prevent falls

OBJECTIVE: To assess the incremental costs and cost effectiveness of implementing a home based muscle strengthening and balance retraining programme that reduced falls and injuries in older women. DESIGN: An economic evaluation carried out within a randomised controlled trial with two years of follow up. Participants were individually prescribed an exercise programme (exercise group, n=116) or received usual care and social visits (control group, n=117). SETTING: 17 general practices in Dunedin, New Zealand. PARTICIPANTS: Women aged 80 years and older living in the community and invited by their general practitioner to take part. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Number of falls and injuries related to falls, costs of implementing the intervention, healthcare service costs resulting from falls and total healthcare service costs during the trial. Cost effectiveness was measured as the incremental cost of implementing the exercise programme per fall event prevented. MAIN RESULTS: 27% of total hospital costs during the trial were related to falls. However, there were no significant differences in health service costs between the two groups. Implementing the exercise programme for one and two years respectively cost $314 and$265 (1995 New Zealand dollars) per fall prevented, and $457 and$426 per fall resulting in a moderate or serious injury prevented. CONCLUSIONS: The costs resulting from falls make up a substantial proportion of the hospital costs for older people. Despite a reduction in falls as a result of this home exercise programme there was no significant reduction in healthcare costs. However, the results reported will provide information on the cost effectiveness of the programme for those making decisions on falls prevention strategies

GPAQ-R: development and psychometric properties of a version of the general practice assessment questionnaire for use for revalidation by general practitioners in the UK.

BACKGROUND: The General Practice Assessment Questionnaire (GPAQ) has been widely used to assess patient experience in general practice in the UK since 2004. In 2013, new regulations were introduced by the General Medical Council (GMC) requiring UK doctors to undertake periodic revalidation, which includes assessment of patient experience for individual doctors. We describe the development of a new version of GPAQ - GPAQ-R which addresses the GMC's requirements for revalidation as well as additional NHS requirements for surveys that GPs may need to carry out in their own practices. METHODS: Questionnaires were given out by doctors or practice staff after routine consultations in line with the guidance given by the General Medical Council for surveys to be used for revalidation. Data analysis and practice reports were provided independently. RESULTS: Data were analysed for questionnaires from 7258 patients relating to 164 GPs in 29 general practices. Levels of missing data were generally low (typically 4.5-6%). The number of returned questionnaires required to achieve reliability of 0.7 were around 35 for individual doctor communication items and 29 for a composite score based on doctor communication items. This suggests that the responses to GPAQ-R had similar reliability to the GMC's own questionnaire and we recommend 30 completed GPAQ-R questionnaires are sufficient for revalidation purposes. However, where an initial screen raises concern, the survey might be repeated with 50 completed questionnaires in order to increase reliability. CONCLUSIONS: GPAQ-R is a development of a well-established patient experience questionnaire used in general practice in the UK since 2004. This new version can be recommended for use in order to meet the UK General Medical Council's requirements for surveys to be used in revalidation of doctors. It also meets the needs of GPs to ask about patient experience relating to aspects of practice care that are not specific to individual general practitioners (e.g. receptionists, telephone access) which meet other survey requirements of the National Health Service in England. Use of GPAQ-R has the potential to reduce the number of surveys that GPs need to carry out in their practices to meet the various regulatory requirements which they face

The Anomalous Hall effect in re-entrant AuFe alloys and the real space Berry phase

The Hall effect has been studied in a series of AuFe samples in the re-entrant concentration range, as well as in the spin glass range. The data demonstrate that the degree of canting of the local spins strongly modifies the anomalous Hall effect, in agreement with theoretical predictions associating canting, chirality and a real space Berry phase. The canonical parametrization of the Hall signal for magnetic conductors becomes inappropriate when local spins are canted.Comment: 4 pages, 1 eps figur

Lower levels of damaged protein biomarkers in the plasma of overweight type 2 diabetic men following supplementation with a standardised bilberry extract

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Stochastic modelling of intermittent scrape-off layer plasma fluctuations

Single-point measurements of fluctuations in the scrape-off layer of magnetized plasmas are generally found to be dominated by large-amplitude bursts which are associated with radial motion of blob-like structures. A stochastic model for these fluctuations is presented, with the plasma density given by a random sequence of bursts with a fixed wave form. Under very general conditions, this model predicts a parabolic relation between the skewness and kurtosis moments of the plasma fluctuations. In the case of exponentially distributed burst amplitudes and waiting times, the probability density function for the fluctuation amplitudes is shown to be a Gamma distribution with the scale parameter given by the average burst amplitude and the shape parameter given by the ratio of the burst duration and waiting times.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figur