The Use of Reciprocal Teaching Procedure in Teaching Narrative Texts to Improve Students\u27 Reading Comprehension

This study was aimed at investigating the implementation of Reciprocal Teaching Procedure (RTP) to improve students\u27 reading comprehension and finding out the students\u27 responses toward this method. Reciprocal Teaching Procedure is one of the teaching extensive reading methods that include four strategies: predicting, clarifying, summarizing, and questioning. The quasi-experimental design was utilized in order to collect the data, in which two classes were taken as the samples of this study. The data were collected through pre-test and post-test which were analyzed by using SPSS 20 and ANATES v5 for Windows. The data analysis of the independent t-test showed that there was a significant difference between the post-test means of the control group and the experimental group. Moreover, the data analysis of the dependent t-test showed that there was an improvement of the experimental group\u27s scores in post-test. Therefore, it could be said that the use of Reciprocal Teaching Procedure was considered effective in improving the students\u27 reading comprehension. Furthermore, based on the findings of the questionnaire, Reciprocal Teaching Procedure has lots of benefit in teaching reading, such as helping the students to comprehend the text easily, encouraging the students to be more active and communicative in every activity, and improving students\u27 interest in reading. Thus, it could be concluded that the students\u27 responses toward the application of Reciprocal Teaching Procedure were positive

Prevalence and predictors of 6-month exclusive breastfeeding among Canadian women: a national survey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In spite of the evidence supporting the importance of breastfeeding during the first year of life, data on breastfeeding practices remain limited in Canada. The study aimed to examine the prevalence and predictors of 6-month exclusive breastfeeding among Canadian women.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The analysis was based on the Maternity Experience Survey targeting women aged ≥ 15 years who had singleton live births between February 2006 - May 2006 in the Canadian provinces and November 2005 - February 2006 in the territories. The main outcome was exclusive breastfeeding based on the World Health Organization definition. Socioeconomic, demographic, maternal, pregnancy and delivery related variables were considered for a multivariate logistic regression using stepwise modeling. Bootstrapping was performed to account for the complex sampling design.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The sample size in this study was 5,615 weighted to represent 66,810 Canadian women. While ever breastfeeding was 90.3%, the 6-month exclusive breastfeeding rate was 13.8%. Based on the regression model, having higher years of education, residing in the Northern territories and Western provinces, living with a partner, having had previous pregnancies, having lower pre-pregnancy body mass index and giving birth at older age were associated with increased likelihood of 6-month exclusive breastfeeding. Moreover, smoking during pregnancy, Caesarean birth, infant's admission to the intensive care unit and maternal employment status before 6 months of infant's age were negatively associated with exclusive breastfeeding. Mothers choosing to deliver at home were more likely to remain exclusively breastfeeding for 6 months (Odds Ratio: 5.29, 95% Confidence Interval: 2.95-9.46).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The 6-month exclusive breastfeeding rate is low in Canada. The study results constitute the basis for designing interventions that aim to bridge the gap between the current practices of breastfeeding and the World Health Organization recommendation.</p

Provision of smoking cessation support for pregnant women in England: results from an online survey of NHS Stop Smoking Services for Pregnant women

Background: Smoking during pregnancy is a major public health concern and an NHS priority. In 2010, 26% of UK women smoked immediately before or during their pregnancy and 12% smoked continuously. Smoking cessation support is provided through free at the point of use Stop Smoking Services for Pregnant women (SSSP). However, to date, little is known of how these services provide support across England. The aim of this study was to describe the key elements of support provided through English SSSP. Methods: SSSP managers were invited to participate in this survey by email. Data were then collected via an online questionnaire; one survey was completed for each SSSP. Up to four reminder emails were sent over a two month period. Results: 86% (121 of 141) of services completed the survey. Responding services were, on average, larger than non-responding services in terms of the number of pregnant women setting quit dates and successfully quitting (p&thinsp;&lt;&thinsp;0.01). In line with the 2010 NICE guidelines, Stop Smoking in Pregnancy and following Childbirth, one in five SSSP identified pregnant smokers using carbon monoxide (CO) testing and refer via an opt-out pathway. All services offered nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) to pregnant women and 87% of services also offered dual therapy NRT, i.e. combination of a patch and short acting NRT product.. The 2010 NICE guidelines note that services should be flexible and client-centred. Consistent with this, SSSP offer pregnant women a range of support types (median 4) including couple/family, group (open or closed) or one-to-one. These are available in a number of locations (median 5), including in community venues, clinics and women's homes. Conclusions: English Stop Smoking Services offer behavioural support and pharmacotherapy to pregnant women motivated to quit smoking. Interventions provided are generally evidence-based and delivered in a variety of both social and health care settings

Do serum biomarkers really measure breast cancer?

Background Because screening mammography for breast cancer is less effective for premenopausal women, we investigated the feasibility of a diagnostic blood test using serum proteins. Methods This study used a set of 98 serum proteins and chose diagnostically relevant subsets via various feature-selection techniques. Because of significant noise in the data set, we applied iterated Bayesian model averaging to account for model selection uncertainty and to improve generalization performance. We assessed generalization performance using leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV) and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. Results The classifiers were able to distinguish normal tissue from breast cancer with a classification performance of AUC = 0.82 ± 0.04 with the proteins MIF, MMP-9, and MPO. The classifiers distinguished normal tissue from benign lesions similarly at AUC = 0.80 ± 0.05. However, the serum proteins of benign and malignant lesions were indistinguishable (AUC = 0.55 ± 0.06). The classification tasks of normal vs. cancer and normal vs. benign selected the same top feature: MIF, which suggests that the biomarkers indicated inflammatory response rather than cancer. Conclusion Overall, the selected serum proteins showed moderate ability for detecting lesions. However, they are probably more indicative of secondary effects such as inflammation rather than specific for malignancy.United States. Dept. of Defense. Breast Cancer Research Program (Grant No. W81XWH-05-1-0292)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (R01 CA-112437-01)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH CA 84955

Impacts of biomedical hashtag-based Twitter campaign: #DHPSP utilization for promotion of open innovation in digital health, patient safety, and personalized medicine

The open innovation hub Digital Health and Patient Safety Platform (DHPSP) was recently established with the purpose to invigorate collaborative scientific research and the development of new digital products and personalized solutions aiming to improve human health and patient safety. In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of a Twitter-based campaign centered on using the hashtag #DHPSP to promote the visibility of the DHPSP initiative. Thus, tweets containing #DHPSP were monitored for five weeks for the period 20.10.2020–24.11.2020 and were analyzed with Symplur Signals (social media analytics tool). In the study period, a total of 11,005 tweets containing #DHPSP were posted by 3020 Twitter users, generating 151,984,378 impressions. Analysis of the healthcare stakeholder-identity of the Twitter users who used #DHPSP revealed that the most of participating user accounts belonged to individuals or doctors, with the top three user locations being the United States (501 users), the United Kingdom (155 users), and India (121 users). Analysis of co-occurring hashtags and the full text of the posted tweets further revealed that the major themes of attention in the #DHPSP Twitter-community were related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), medicine and health, digital health technologies, and science communication in general. Overall, these results indicate that the #DHPSP initiative achieved high visibility and engaged a large body of Twitter users interested in the DHPSP focus area. Moreover, the conducted campaign resulted in an increase of DHPSP member enrollments and website visitors, and new scientific collaborations were formed. Thus, Twitter campaigns centered on a dedicated hashtag prove to be a highly efficient tool for visibility-promotion, which could be successfully utilized by healthcare-related open innovation platforms or initiatives

Developmental Hippocampal Neuroplasticity in a Model of Nicotine Replacement Therapy during Pregnancy and Breastfeeding

The influence of developmental nicotine exposure on the brain represents an important health topic in light of the popularity of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) as a smoking cessation method during pregnancy.In this study, we used a model of NRT during pregnancy and breastfeeding to explore the consequences of chronic developmental nicotine exposure on cerebral neuroplasticity in the offspring. We focused on two dynamic lifelong phenomena in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus that are highly sensitive to the environment: granule cell neurogenesis and long-term potentiation (LTP).Pregnant rats were implanted with osmotic mini-pumps delivering either nicotine or saline solutions. Plasma nicotine and metabolite levels were measured in dams and offspring. Corticosterone levels, DG neurogenesis (cell proliferation, survival and differentiation) and glutamatergic electrophysiological activity were measured in pups.Juvenile (P15) and adolescent (P41) offspring exposed to nicotine throughout prenatal and postnatal development displayed no significant alteration in DG neurogenesis compared to control offspring. However, NRT-like nicotine exposure significantly increased LTP in the DG of juvenile offspring as measured in vitro from hippocampal slices, suggesting that the mechanisms underlying nicotine-induced LTP enhancement previously described in adult rats are already functional in pups.These results indicate that synaptic plasticity is disrupted in offspring breastfed by dams passively exposed to nicotine in an NRT-like fashion