Adult participation in children’s word searches: on the use of prompting, hinting, and supplying a model

Although word searching in children is very common, very little is known about how adults support children in the turns following the child’s search behaviours, an important topic because of the social, educational and clinical implications. This study characterises, in detail, teachers’ use of prompting, hinting and supplying a model. From a classroom dataset of 53 instances, several distinctive patterns emerged. A prompted completion sequence is initiated by a ‘word retrieval elicitor’ (‘fishing’) and is interpreted as a request to complete the phrase. Non-verbal prompting is accomplished through a combination of gaze and gesture and, also, as a series of prompts. Hinting supplies a verbal clue, typically via a wh-question, or by specifying the nature of the repairable. In contrast, the strategies that supply a linguistic model include both embedded and exposed corrections and offers of candidates. A sequential relationship was found between prompting, hinting and supplying a model which has implications for how clinicians and teachers can foster self-repair

Care coordinators' responses to clients' trauma: the role of coping and perceived organisational support

Research suggests that working with trauma survivors can result in a range of negative effects including ‘vicarious trauma’, ‘secondary trauma’, ‘compassion fatigue’ and ‘burnout’ amongst other things. Although the impact of being exposed to traumatic stories has been investigated in a range of professionals no studies to date have explored the impact of this on UK mental health workers known as care coordinators. The aim of this study was to explore a sample of care coordinators responses to client’s traumatic stories and the role of coping and perceived organisational support. Twelve UK care coordinators (community psychiatric nurses, occupational therapists and social workers) from two NHS mental health recovery teams completed interviews about their experiences of hearing clients’ traumatic experiences. Grounded theory was employed to analyse the interviews. The care coordinators heard traumatic stories in their role and were ‘active participants’ in these disclosures. They also experienced short and long-term levels of distress which included a range of negative emotions, a mixture of positive and negative responses and a broadening of their perspectives on themselves, their clients and the world. Care coordinators also developed a range of individual coping strategies, experienced individual and organisational barriers to seeking support and experienced limited organisational support for hearing traumatic stories. This is the first UK study to investigate care coordinators’ responses to clients’ traumatic experiences. Therefore further exploratory studies are required in addition to studies with larger sample sizes and measures of trauma related symptoms

Why Rent Control Is Still a Regulatory Taking

The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that land-use regulations that fail to substantially advance legitimate state interests violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. This standard seems readily applicable to rent control, a policy that has been shown to exacerbate the problems is intended to remedy, and to impose social heavy costs that would not otherwise exist. Nevertheless, the California Supreme Court has declared that it will not strike down rent control under the substantial advancement standard, nor will it apply a heightened level of scrutiny to such regulations. In response to these rulings, California rental property owners have taken their constitutional claims to federal court. In a series of decisions culminating in Cashman v. City of Cotati, the Ninth Circuit has found rent control laws to violate the Takings Clause under a substantial advancement standard. One of these cases, Lingle v. Chevron, USA, was accepted for review by the United States Supreme Court in October, 2004. The outcome of this case will have major ramifications for rent control and regulatory takings law in the 21st century

Knick and the Elephant in the Courtroom: Who Cares Least About Property Rights?

In Knick v. Township of Scott, the Supreme Court corrected one of the most egregious and inexplicable blunders of its 230-year history. For more than three decades, plaintiffs who alleged a violation of the Takings Clause by state or local governments were barred from suing for compensation in federal court. The source of this prohibition was Justice Blackmun’s 1985 opinion in Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City—a decision that most scholars and practitioners believe rested on a fundamental misunderstanding of both constitutional text and legal procedure

Molecular gas in extreme star-forming environments: the starbursts Arp220 and NGC6240 as case studies

We report single-dish multi-transition measurements of the 12^CO, HCN, and HCO^+ molecular line emission as well as HNC J=1-0 and HNCO in the two ultraluminous infra-red galaxies Arp220 and NGC6240. Using this new molecular line inventory, in conjunction with existing data in the literature, we compiled the most extensive molecular line data sets to date for such galaxies. The many rotational transitions, with their different excitation requirements, allow the study of the molecular gas over a wide range of different densities and temperatures with significant redundancy, and thus allow good constraints on the properties of the dense gas in these two systems. The mass (~(1-2) x 10^10 Msun) of dense gas (>10^5-6 cm^-3) found accounts for the bulk of their molecular gas mass, and is consistent with most of their IR luminosities powered by intense star bursts while self-regulated by O,B star cluster radiative pressure onto the star-forming dense molecular gas. The highly excited HCN transitions trace a gas phase ~(10-100)x denser than that of the sub-thermally excited HCO^+ lines (for both galaxies). These two phases are consistent with an underlying density-size power law found for Galactic GMCs (but with a steeper exponent), with HCN lines tracing denser and more compact regions than HCO^+. Whether this is true in IR-luminous, star forming galaxies in general remains to be seen, and underlines the need for observations of molecular transitions with high critical densities for a sample of bright (U)LIRGs in the local Universe -- a task for which the HI-FI instrument on board Herschel is ideally suited to do.Comment: 38 pages (preprint ApJ style), 3 figures, accepted for Ap

Can aerobic exercise protect against dementia?

There are more than 36 million people in the US over the age of 65, and all of them are impacted by the cognitive decline and brain atrophy associated with normal aging and dementia-causing conditions like Alzheimer's disease, Lewy body disease, and vascular dementia. Recently, moderate exercise and improved fitness have been shown to enhance cognition in cognitively normal older persons as well as in individuals who complain of memory difficulty. Additionally, fitness correlates with brain volume in persons who are cognitively normal and those with Alzheimer's disease. Exercise in mouse models causes neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus. This review will discuss animal experiments, epidemiology, limited prospective studies, and biomarker data that make the case that prospective blinded studies are urgently needed to evaluate the role of aerobic exercise in protecting against dementia