Early career physical educators\u27 perspectives on learning to teach in urban schools

The purpose of the study was to examine early career physical educators\u27 perspectives on learning to teach in urban schools. Using occupational socialization theory (Lawson, 1983a, 1983b; Lortie, 1975) and cultural relevance theory (Flory & McCaughtry, 2011), I studied three early-career physical education teachers who taught in urban schools but did not grow up in urban communities. Data collection occurred for approximately six weeks with each teacher via lesson observation and in-depth interviews. Data were analyzed using constant comparison. The findings of this study outlined the particular elements from each teachers\u27 experience during their pre-professional socialization, professional socialization, and induction that played a role in their success and struggle as a newer teacher in an urban school. During pre-professional socialization, the influence of middle-class upbringing, negative experiences in school PE, varying amounts of exposure to diversity, family views of culture, and appreciation of cooperative activities had an impact on the teachers\u27 ability to make meaningful connections with their diverse students. Professional socialization experiences which affected teachers\u27 success and struggle as an early career physical educator included lack of diversity within PETE programs, sport-based curriculum, lack of coursework in sociocultural issues, experiences in urban schools, and lack of interpersonal skill development. During the induction phase, school support mechanisms, levels of administrator support, insufficient facilities, levels of involvement within school, teaching in a culture of testing, and discovery of Whiteness were all elements that contributed to these teachers\u27 successes and struggles. Based on these findings, I recommend further research focused on learning more about developing teachers to be prepared for more diverse school contexts. First, I suggest further research examining how PETE programs prepare White, middle-class teaching candidates for diverse school contexts. Second, I recommend inquiry related to what effective sociocultural coursework might entail specific to PETE majors. Third, I recommend questioning the effects of standardized testing on urban students\u27 physical activity and health, and how PE teachers in these schools are affected by accountability practices. Fourth, I recommend research related to how successful urban teachers learn about the community dynamics in their particular schools. Finally, I suggest studying the process that teachers go through to become reflective and analytical of their own teaching practices. In addition to these recommendations for future research, I recommend that teacher education programs provide more meaningful experiences in urban school contexts during professional socialization, and include coursework in sociocultural issues to better prepare their teacher candidates. Finally, I suggest that school districts work to provide more mentoring programs for newer teachers, especially those who do not come from urban backgrounds or experiences, provide professional development opportunities specific to urban schools, and work to create more agreeable conditions for PE teachers

Listening to women: experiences of using closed-loop in type 1 diabetes pregnancy

Introduction: Recent high-profile calls have emphasized that women's experiences should be considered in maternity care provisioning. We explored women's experiences of using closed-loop during type 1 diabetes (T1D) pregnancy to inform decision-making about antenatal rollout and guidance and support given to future users. Methods: We interviewed 23 closed-loop participants in the Automated insulin Delivery Among Pregnant women with T1D (AiDAPT) trial after randomization to closed-loop and ∼20 weeks later. Data were analyzed thematically. Results: Women described how closed-loop lessened the physical and mental demands of diabetes management, enabling them to feel more normal and sleep better. By virtue of spending increased time-in-range, women also worried less about risks to their baby and being judged negatively by health care professionals. Most noted that intensive input and support during early pregnancy had been crucial to adjusting to, and developing confidence in, the technology. Women emphasized that attaining pregnancy glucose targets still required ongoing effort from themselves and the health care team. Women described needing education to help them determine when, and how, to intervene and when to allow the closed-loop to operate without interference. All women reported more enjoyable pregnancy experiences as a result of using closed-loop; some also noted being able to remain longer in paid employment. Conclusions: Study findings endorse closed-loop use in T1D pregnancy by highlighting how the technology can facilitate positive pregnancy experiences. To realize fully the benefits of closed-loop, pregnant women would benefit from initial intensive oversight and support together with closed-loop specific education and training. Clinical Trial Registration number: NCT04938557

Communicating health threats: Linguistic evidence for effective public health messaging during the Covid-19 pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced the importance of effective and timely public health messaging. As a health threat, the global outbreak of Covid-19 required communication that targeted the entire population while also raising special awareness among segments of the population at higher risk of infection and poor outcomes. At the same time, public health messaging had to be adapted at pace as new evidence about the nature of the virus and the impact of different types of intervention emerged. More than three years into the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are able to take stock of the challenges that have surrounded, and continue to affect, effective public health messaging, especially in relation to the notion of risk and at-risk populations, and the different measures that have been implemented to curtail the spread and impact of the virus. In this report we present the findings of the AHRC/UKRI-funded project ‘Coronavirus Discourses: linguistic evidence for effective public health messaging’, which ran from January 2021 to July 2022. The project brought together a multidisciplinary team of linguists, computer scientists and experts in human factors research working in partnership with the UK Health Security Agency, Public Health Wales and NHS Education for Scotland to investigate the trajectories and impact of public health messages during the Covid-19 pandemic. The research team used a wide range of methods, including corpus linguistics (the study of language patterns in large amounts of digitised text), public surveys, and a Public Involvement Panel (PIP) to analyse real-world public health discourse

Health and Politics: Analyzing the Government of Alberta’s COVID-19 Communications

A multi--part paper for the panel on June 1st. We discuss a project to gather discourse on COVID-19 from press briefings, Twitter and other sources. We discuss how we have analyzed a first 6-month span of the gathered discourse and present some preliminary findings

Working with troubles and failures in conversation between humans and robots: workshop report

This paper summarizes the structure and findings from the first Workshop on Troubles and Failures in Conversations between Humans and Robots. The workshop was organized to bring together a small, interdisciplinary group of researchers working on miscommunication from two complementary perspectives. One group of technology-oriented researchers was made up of roboticists, Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) researchers and dialogue system experts. The second group involved experts from conversation analysis, cognitive science, and linguistics. Uniting both groups of researchers is the belief that communication failures between humans and machines need to be taken seriously and that a systematic analysis of such failures may open fruitful avenues in research beyond current practices to improve such systems, including both speech-centric and multimodal interfaces. This workshop represents a starting point for this endeavour. The aim of the workshop was threefold: Firstly, to establish an interdisciplinary network of researchers that share a common interest in investigating communicative failures with a particular view towards robotic speech interfaces; secondly, to gain a partial overview of the “failure landscape” as experienced by roboticists and HRI researchers; and thirdly, to determine the potential for creating a robotic benchmark scenario for testing future speech interfaces with respect to the identified failures. The present article summarizes both the “failure landscape” surveyed during the workshop as well as the outcomes of the attempt to define a benchmark scenario.Peer Reviewe

Student Attitudes Contribute to the Effectiveness of a Genomics CURE

The Genomics Education Partnership (GEP) engages students in a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE). To better understand the student attributes that support success in this CURE, we asked students about their attitudes using previously published scales that measure epistemic beliefs about work and science, interest in science, and grit. We found, in general, that the attitudes students bring with them into the classroom contribute to two outcome measures, namely, learning as assessed by a pre- and postquiz and perceived self-reported benefits. While the GEP CURE produces positive outcomes overall, the students with more positive attitudes toward science, particularly with respect to epistemic beliefs, showed greater gains. The findings indicate the importance of a student\u27s epistemic beliefs to achieving positive learning outcomes

Novel gene function revealed by mouse mutagenesis screens for models of age-related disease

Determining the genetic bases of age-related disease remains a major challenge requiring a spectrum of approaches from human and clinical genetics to the utilization of model organism studies. Here we report a large-scale genetic screen in mice employing a phenotype-driven discovery platform to identify mutations resulting in age-related disease, both late-onset and progressive. We have utilized N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea mutagenesis to generate pedigrees of mutagenized mice that were subject to recurrent screens for mutant phenotypes as the mice aged. In total, we identify 105 distinct mutant lines from 157 pedigrees analysed, out of which 27 are late-onset phenotypes across a range of physiological systems. Using whole-genome sequencing we uncover the underlying genes for 44 of these mutant phenotypes, including 12 late-onset phenotypes. These genes reveal a number of novel pathways involved with age-related disease. We illustrate our findings by the recovery and characterization of a novel mouse model of age-related hearing loss

Benefits for children with suspected cancer from routine whole-genome sequencing

Clinical whole-genome sequencing (WGS) has been shown to deliver potential benefits to children with cancer and to alter treatment in high-risk patient groups. It remains unknown whether offering WGS to every child with suspected cancer can change patient management. We collected WGS variant calls and clinical and diagnostic information from 281 children (282 tumors) across two English units (n = 152 from a hematology center, n = 130 from a solid tumor center) where WGS had become a routine test. Our key finding was that variants uniquely attributable to WGS changed the management in ~7% (20 out of 282) of cases while providing additional disease-relevant findings, beyond standard-of-care molecular tests, in 108 instances for 83 (29%) cases. Furthermore, WGS faithfully reproduced every standard-of-care molecular test (n = 738) and revealed several previously unknown genomic features of childhood tumors. We show that WGS can be delivered as part of routine clinical care to children with suspected cancer and can change clinical management by delivering unexpected genomic insights. Our experience portrays WGS as a clinically impactful assay for routine practice, providing opportunities for assay consolidation and for delivery of molecularly informed patient care.</p

Integration of new biological and physical retrospective dosimetry methods into EU emergency response plans : joint RENEB and EURADOS inter-laboratory comparisons

Purpose: RENEB, 'Realising the European Network of Biodosimetry and Physical Retrospective Dosimetry,' is a network for research and emergency response mutual assistance in biodosimetry within the EU. Within this extremely active network, a number of new dosimetry methods have recently been proposed or developed. There is a requirement to test and/or validate these candidate techniques and inter-comparison exercises are a well-established method for such validation. Materials and methods: The authors present details of inter-comparisons of four such new methods: dicentric chromosome analysis including telomere and centromere staining; the gene expression assay carried out in whole blood; Raman spectroscopy on blood lymphocytes, and detection of radiation induced thermoluminescent signals in glass screens taken from mobile phones. Results: In general the results show good agreement between the laboratories and methods within the expected levels of uncertainty, and thus demonstrate that there is a lot of potential for each of the candidate techniques. Conclusions: Further work is required before the new methods can be included within the suite of reliable dosimetry methods for use by RENEB partners and others in routine and emergency response scenarios