282 research outputs found
âI was proud of myself that I didn't give up and I did itâ: Experiences of pride and triumph in learning science
The role that specific emotions, such as pride and triumph, play during instruction in science education is an underresearched field of study. Emotions are recognized as central to learning yet little is known about the way in which they are produced in naturalistic settings, how emotions relate to classroom learning during interactions, and what antecedent factors are associated with emotional experiences during instruction. Data sources for the study include emotion diaries, student written artifacts, video recordings of class interactions, and interviews. Emotions produced in the moment during classroom interactions are analyzed from video data and audio data through a novel theoretical framework related to the sociology of human emotions. These direct observations are compared with studentsâ recollected emotional experiences reported through emotion diaries and interviews. The study establishes links between pride and triumph within classroom interactions and instructional tasks during learning episodes in a naturalistic setting. We discuss particular classroom activities that are associated with justified feelings of pride and triumph. More specifically, classroom events associated with these emotions were related to understanding science concepts, social interactions, and achieving success on challenging tasks
Student and staff perceptions of a science program for poor readers
This study was concerned with the student and staff perceptions of an implemented science program developed for poor readers in normal Year 8 classes at one school. Student and staff perceptions were obtained from analyses of responses to learning environment perceptual measures and interview questions. Not only did the participants respond positively to the program, but also the poor readers perceived their learning environment more favourably than the good readers in the same classrooms
Factors contributing to the time taken to consult with symptoms of lung cancer: a cross-sectional study
<b>Objectives</b>: To determine what factors are associated with the time people take to consult with symptoms of lung cancer, with a focus on those from rural and socially deprived areas.
<b>Methods</b>: A cross-sectional quantitative interview survey was performed of 360 patients with newly diagnosed primary lung cancer in three Scottish hospitals (two in Glasgow, one in NE Scotland). Supplementary data were obtained from medical case notes. The main outcome measures were the number of days from (1) the date participant defined first symptom until date of presentation to a medical practitioner; and (2) the date of earliest symptom from a symptom checklist (derived from clinical guidelines) until date of presentation to a medical practitioner.
<b>Results</b>: 179 participants (50%) had symptoms for more than 14 weeks before presenting to a medical practitioner (median 99 days; interquartile range 31â381). 270 participants (75%) had unrecognised symptoms of lung cancer. There were no significant differences in time taken to consult with symptoms of lung cancer between rural and/or deprived participants compared with urban and/or affluent participants. Factors independently associated with increased time before consulting about symptoms were living alone, a history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and longer pack years of smoking. Haemoptysis, new onset of shortness of breath, cough and loss of appetite were significantly associated with earlier consulting, as were a history of chest infection and renal failure.
<b>Conclusion</b>: For many people with lung cancer, regardless of location and socioeconomic status, the time between symptom onset and consultation was long enough to plausibly affect prognosis. Long-term smokers, those with COPD and/or those living alone are at particular risk of taking longer to consult with symptoms of lung cancer and practitioners should be alert to this
New exact solution of Dirac-Coulomb equation with exact boundary condition
It usually writes the boundary condition of the wave equation in the Coulomb
field as a rough form without considering the size of the atomic nucleus. The
rough expression brings on that the solutions of the Klein-Gordon equation and
the Dirac equation with the Coulomb potential are divergent at the origin of
the coordinates, also the virtual energies, when the nuclear charges number Z >
137, meaning the original solutions do not satisfy the conditions for
determining solution. Any divergences of the wave functions also imply that the
probability density of the meson or the electron would rapidly increase when
they are closing to the atomic nucleus. What it predicts is not a truth that
the atom in ground state would rapidly collapse to the neutron-like. We
consider that the atomic nucleus has definite radius and write the exact
boundary condition for the hydrogen and hydrogen-like atom, then newly solve
the radial Dirac-Coulomb equation and obtain a new exact solution without any
mathematical and physical difficulties. Unexpectedly, the K value constructed
by Dirac is naturally written in the barrier width or the equivalent radius of
the atomic nucleus in solving the Dirac equation with the exact boundary
condition, and it is independent of the quantum energy. Without any divergent
wave function and the virtual energies, we obtain a new formula of the energy
levels that is different from the Dirac formula of the energy levels in the
Coulomb field.Comment: 12 pages,no figure
Design, Commissioning and Performance of the PIBETA Detector at PSI
We describe the design, construction and performance of the PIBETA detector
built for the precise measurement of the branching ratio of pion beta decay,
pi+ -> pi0 e+ nu, at the Paul Scherrer Institute. The central part of the
detector is a 240-module spherical pure CsI calorimeter covering 3*pi sr solid
angle. The calorimeter is supplemented with an active collimator/beam degrader
system, an active segmented plastic target, a pair of low-mass cylindrical wire
chambers and a 20-element cylindrical plastic scintillator hodoscope. The whole
detector system is housed inside a temperature-controlled lead brick enclosure
which in turn is lined with cosmic muon plastic veto counters. Commissioning
and calibration data were taken during two three-month beam periods in
1999/2000 with pi+ stopping rates between 1.3*E3 pi+/s and 1.3*E6 pi+/s. We
examine the timing, energy and angular detector resolution for photons,
positrons and protons in the energy range of 5-150 MeV, as well as the response
of the detector to cosmic muons. We illustrate the detector signatures for the
assorted rare pion and muon decays and their associated backgrounds.Comment: 117 pages, 48 Postscript figures, 5 tables, Elsevier LaTeX, submitted
to Nucl. Instrum. Meth.
Counting the bodies: Estimating the numbers and spatial variation of Australian reptiles, birds and mammals killed by two invasive mesopredators
Aim
Introduced predators negatively impact biodiversity globally, with insular fauna often most severely affected. Here, we assess spatial variation in the number of terrestrial vertebrates (excluding amphibians) killed by two mammalian mesopredators introduced to Australia, the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and feral cat (Felis catus). We aim to identify prey groups that suffer especially high rates of predation, and regions where losses to foxes and/or cats are most substantial.
Location
Australia.
Methods
We draw information on the spatial variation in tallies of reptiles, birds and mammals killed by cats in Australia from published studies. We derive tallies for fox predation by (i) modelling continental-scale spatial variation in fox density, (ii) modelling spatial variation in the frequency of occurrence of prey groups in fox diet, (iii) analysing the number of prey individuals within dietary samples and (iv) discounting animals taken as carrion. We derive point estimates of the numbers of individuals killed annually by foxes and by cats and map spatial variation in these tallies.
Results
Foxes kill more reptiles, birds and mammals (peaking at 1071 kmâ2 yearâ1) than cats (55 kmâ2 yearâ1) across most of the unmodified temperate and forested areas of mainland Australia, reflecting the generally higher density of foxes than cats in these environments. However, across most of the continent â mainly the arid central and tropical northern regions (and on most Australian islands) â cats kill more animals than foxes. We estimate that foxes and cats together kill 697 million reptiles annually in Australia, 510 million birds and 1435 million mammals.
Main conclusions
This continental-scale analysis demonstrates that predation by two introduced species takes a substantial and ongoing toll on Australian reptiles, birds and mammals. Continuing population declines and potential extinctions of some of these species threatens to further compound Australia's poor contemporary conservation record
Time-integrated luminosity recorded by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II e+e- collider
This article is the Preprint version of the final published artcile which can be accessed at the link below.We describe a measurement of the time-integrated luminosity of the data collected by the BABAR experiment at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy e+e- collider at the Ï(4S), Ï(3S), and Ï(2S) resonances and in a continuum region below each resonance. We measure the time-integrated luminosity by counting e+e-âe+e- and (for the Ï(4S) only) e+e-âÎŒ+ÎŒ- candidate events, allowing additional photons in the final state. We use data-corrected simulation to determine the cross-sections and reconstruction efficiencies for these processes, as well as the major backgrounds. Due to the large cross-sections of e+e-âe+e- and e+e-âÎŒ+ÎŒ-, the statistical uncertainties of the measurement are substantially smaller than the systematic uncertainties. The dominant systematic uncertainties are due to observed differences between data and simulation, as well as uncertainties on the cross-sections. For data collected on the Ï(3S) and Ï(2S) resonances, an additional uncertainty arises due to Ïâe+e-X background. For data collected off the Ï resonances, we estimate an additional uncertainty due to time dependent efficiency variations, which can affect the short off-resonance runs. The relative uncertainties on the luminosities of the on-resonance (off-resonance) samples are 0.43% (0.43%) for the Ï(4S), 0.58% (0.72%) for the Ï(3S), and 0.68% (0.88%) for the Ï(2S).This work is supported by the US Department of Energy and National Science Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada), the Commissariat Ă lâEnergie Atomique and Institut National de Physique NuclĂ©aire et de Physiquedes Particules (France), the Bundesministerium fĂŒr Bildung und Forschung and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany), the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Italy), the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (The Netherlands), the Research Council of Norway, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Ministerio de Ciencia e InnovaciĂłn (Spain), and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (United Kingdom). Individuals have received support from the Marie-Curie IEF program (European Union) and the A.P. Sloan Foundation (USA)
First dose ChAdOx1 and BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccinations and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis : a pooled self-controlled case series study of 11.6 million individuals in England, Scotland, and Wales
Funding: This research is part of the Data and Connectivity National Core Study, led by Health Data Research UK in partnership with the Office for National Statistics and funded by UK Research and Innovation (grant ref MC_PC_20029, AS). EAVE II is funded by the Medical Research Council (https://mrc.ukri.org/) (UKRI MC_PC 19075, AS) with the support of BREATHE, The Health Data Research Hub for Respiratory Health (MC_PC_19004, AS), which is funded through the UK Research and Innovation Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and delivered through Health Data Research UK. This work was supported by the Con-COV team funded by the Medical Research Council (grant number: MR/V028367/1, RL). This work was supported by Health Data Research UK, which receives its funding from HDR UK Ltd (HDR-9006, RL) funded by the UK Medical Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council, Department of Health and Social Care (England), Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates, Health and Social Care Research and Development Division (Welsh Government), Public Health Agency (Northern Ireland), British Heart Foundation (BHF) and the Wellcome Trust. This work was supported by the ADR Wales programme of work (https://www.adruk.org/). ADR Wales is part of the Economic and Social Research Council (part of UK Research and Innovation) funded ADR UK (grant ES/S007393/1, RL). SVK acknowledges funding from NHS Research Scotland Senior Clinical Fellowship (SCAF/15/02, SVK), the MRC (MC_UU_00022/2, SVK), and the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office (SPHSU17, SVK).Background : Several countries restricted the administration of ChAdOx1 to older age groups in 2021 over safety concerns following case reports and observed versus expected analyses suggesting a possible association with cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST). Large datasets are required to precisely estimate the association between Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination and CVST due to the extreme rarity of this event. We aimed to accomplish this by combining national data from England, Scotland, and Wales. Methods and findings : We created data platforms consisting of linked primary care, secondary care, mortality, and virological testing data in each of England, Scotland, and Wales, with a combined cohort of 11,637,157 people and 6,808,293 person years of follow-up. The cohort start date was December 8, 2020, and the end date was June 30, 2021. The outcome measure we examined was incident CVST events recorded in either primary or secondary care records. We carried out a self-controlled case series (SCCS) analysis of this outcome following first dose vaccination with ChAdOx1 and BNT162b2. The observation period consisted of an initial 90-day reference period, followed by a 2-week prerisk period directly prior to vaccination, and a 4-week risk period following vaccination. Counts of CVST cases from each country were tallied, then expanded into a full dataset with 1 row for each individual and observation time period. There was a combined total of 201 incident CVST events in the cohorts (29.5 per million person years). There were 81 CVST events in the observation period among those who a received first dose of ChAdOx1 (approximately 16.34 per million doses) and 40 for those who received a first dose of BNT162b2 (approximately 12.60 per million doses). We fitted conditional Poisson models to estimate incidence rate ratios (IRRs). Vaccination with ChAdOx1 was associated with an elevated risk of incident CVST events in the 28 days following vaccination, IRR = 1.93 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.20 to 3.11). We did not find an association between BNT162b2 and CVST in the 28 days following vaccination, IRR = 0.78 (95% CI 0.34 to 1.77). Our study had some limitations. The SCCS study design implicitly controls for variables that are constant over the observation period, but also assumes that outcome events are independent of exposure. This assumption may not be satisfied in the case of CVST, firstly because it is a serious adverse event, and secondly because the vaccination programme in the United Kingdom prioritised the clinically extremely vulnerable and those with underlying health conditions, which may have caused a selection effect for individuals more prone to CVST. Although we pooled data from several large datasets, there was still a low number of events, which may have caused imprecision in our estimates. Conclusions : In this study, we observed a small elevated risk of CVST events following vaccination with ChAdOx1, but not BNT162b2. Our analysis pooled information from large datasets from England, Scotland, and Wales. This evidence may be useful in riskâbenefit analyses of vaccine policies and in providing quantification of risks associated with vaccination to the general public.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
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