Beliefs of College Students about the Multicultural Teaching Characteristics of Teachers with Similar of Dissimilar Ethicities

Educational Psycholog

Applications of Syntax and Pragmatics to Research in Writing.

Researchers in writing have expressed disillusionment with transformational-generative syntax over the past decade. Such disillusionment is caused partly by the different research goals and assumptions about language held by researchers in syntax and those in writing, and partly by unrealistic expectations about the pedagogical usefulness of syntactic theory. However, rather than abandoning the study of linguistics, writing specialists may benefit by reexamining the relation between their field and that of linguistics. First, researchers in writing should distinguish more clearly between applied research and pedagogy. Syntactic theory can be used to explain and analyze certain structural phenomena in student writing, even though this theory does not always suggest immediate pedagogical strategies. Second, writing specialists should investigate areas of linguistics other than syntactic theory. Findings from pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and functional linguistics are applicable to the study of how writers adapt discourse to particular audiences, and to the study of how grammatical competence manifests itself in performance

The genetics of immune and infection phenotypes in wild mice, Mus musculus domesticus

Wild animals are under constant threat from a wide range of micro- and macroparasites in their environment. Animals make immune responses against parasites, and these are important in affecting the dynamics of parasite populations. Individual animals vary in their anti-parasite immune responses. Genetic polymorphism of immune-related loci contributes to inter-individual differences in immune responses, but most of what we know in this regard comes from studies of humans or laboratory animals; there are very few such studies of wild animals naturally infected with parasites. Here we have investigated the effect of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in immune-related loci (the major histocompatibility complex [MHC], and loci coding for cytokines and Toll-like receptors) on a wide range of immune and infection phenotypes in UK wild house mice, Mus musculus domesticus. We found strong associations between SNPs in various MHC and cytokine-coding loci on both immune measures (antibody concentration and cytokine production) and on infection phenotypes (infection with mites, worms and viruses). Our study provides a comprehensive view of how polymorphism of immune-related loci affects immune and infection phenotypes in naturally infected wild rodent populations

THE IMPACT OF PLACEMENT IN SPECIAL CARE UNIT SETTINGS ON THE WELLBEING OF YOUNG PEOPLE AND THEIR FAMILIES

The Special Residential Services Board, established under Part 11 of the Children Act 2001, commissioned the Centre for Social and Educational Research to carry out this study into the Impact of Placement in Special Care Unit Settings on the Wellbeing of Young People and Their Families. Special Care Units are a relatively new part of the child care system in Ireland. They are facilities that provide a secure environment for young people who require protection because of a real and substantial risk to their health, safety, development or welfare. At the time the work for this report was carried out, all children placed in Special Care Units, had to be placed there on a High Court Order. When Part 3 of the Children Act 2001, is fully implemented, the process for obtaining a Special Care Order will be through the District Court. The Special Residential Services Board will be required to give a view to the Court on the appropriateness of any such Order. As Special Care Units have been in existence for a relatively short period of time, research in this area has been limited. This report therefore represents an important contribution to our knowledge of special care and the impact of these placements on young people. One of the functions of the Special Residential Services Board is to carry out a programme of research into specialist residential services, and we intend to develop a body of knowledge in this field. We would like to thank the researchers Dr Lorna Ryan, Mr Niall Hanlon and Ms Louise Riley and Ms Audrey Warren for her contributions to the final report. We would also like to thank the staff of the units and our colleagues across the Health Services Executive. Most importantly we would like to thank the children and families who took part in the research

The PEDANT genome database in 2005

The PEDANT genome database (http://pedant.gsf.de) contains pre-computed bioinformatics analyses of publicly available genomes. Its main mission is to provide robust automatic annotation of the vast majority of amino acid sequences, which have not been subjected to in-depth manual curation by human experts in high-quality protein sequence databases. By design PEDANT annotation is genome-oriented, making it possible to explore genomic context of gene products, and evaluate functional and structural content of genomes using a category-based query mechanism. At present, the PEDANT database contains exhaustive annotation of over 1 240 000 proteins from 270 eubacterial, 23 archeal and 41 eukaryotic genomes

Revisiting funeral recordings during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Hybrid funerals : how online attendance facilitates and impedes participation

This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), as part of UK Research and Innovation’s rapid response to Covid-19. Grant number: [ES/V017047/1].Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Why does funeral attendance matter? : Revisiting 'Configurational Eulogies' in light of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK

Open Access via the Taylor & Francis Agreement Acknowledgements The authors thank Paul Kefford and Imogen Jones and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. Funding This research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), as part of UK Research and Innovation’s rapid response to Covid-19. Grant number: [ES/V017047/1].Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Prevalence of Metabolic Syndrome and Its Components in Firefighters: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Previous studies consistently report a high prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors among firefighters. However, the clustering of CVD risk factors, defined as metabolic syndrome (MetSyn), has received little attention by comparison. Therefore, the aim of this study was to estimate the pooled prevalence of MetSyn among firefighters. Using combinations of free text for 'firefighter' and 'metabolic syndrome', databases were searched for eligible studies. Meta-analyses calculated weighted pooled prevalence estimates with 95% confidence intervals (CI) for MetSyn, its components and overweight/obesity. Univariate meta-regression was performed to explore sources of heterogeneity. Of 1440 articles screened, 25 studies were included in the final analysis. The pooled prevalence of MetSyn in 31,309 firefighters was 22.3% (95% CI: 17.7-27.0%). The prevalences of MetSyn components were hypertension: 39.1%; abdominal obesity: 37.9%; hypertriglyceridemia: 30.2%; dyslipidemia: 30.1%; and hyperglycemia: 21.1%. Overweight and obesity prevalence rates in firefighters were 44.1% and 35.6%, respectively. Meta-regression revealed that decreased risk of bias (RoB) score and increased body mass index (BMI) were positively associated with an increase in MetSyn prevalence. Since one in five firefighters may meet the criteria for MetSyn, novel interventions should be explored to both prevent MetSyn and reduce the onset of CVD risk factors

Incest in the 1990s: reading Anais Nin's 'Father Story'

In the summer of 1933, diarist, author and critic Anaïs Nin joined her father for a short vacation in France. Nin wrote about the trip in her diary afterwards, referring to it as the ‘Father Story.’ In the story, she details how, aged 30, she embarked upon an affair with her father which would last for several months. Rather than displaying the signs of trauma that we have come to expect from the incest narrative such as dissociation, blame and recrimination, the ‘Father Story’ is more ambiguous in its tone. Part-tribute to the father, part-seduction narrative, part-confession, this is a story that resists categorisation – a resistance that has ethical, critical and formal ramifications for our reading of incest narratives. Upon its publication in the early 1990s, critics responded to the ‘Father Story’ as fantastical, excessive and vulgar. These responses form part of a wider American father story during this period; a story about memory, therapy culture, family values and the concealed rules of testimony. This article reads Anaïs Nin’s narrative as a text which raises fundamental questions about why certain father (and daughter) stories are culturally acceptable and others are not