Making Commitments to Racial Justice Actionable

In this article, we articulate a framework for making our commitments to racial justice actionable, a framework that moves from narrating confessional accounts to articulating our commitments and then acting on them through both self-work and work-with-others, a dialectic possibility we identify and explore. We model a method for moving beyond originary confessional narratives and engage in dialogue with “the willingness to be disturbed” (Wheatley, 2002), believing that disturbances are productive places from which we can more clearly articulate and act from our commitments. Drawing on our own experiences, we engage the political, systemic, and enduring nature of racism as we together chart an educational frame that counters the macro-logics of oppression enacted daily through micro-inequities. As we advocate for additional and ongoing considerations of the work of antiracism in educational settings, we invite others to embrace, along with us, both the willingness to be disturbed and the attention to making commitments actionable

Making Commitments to Racial Justice Actionable

In this article, we articulate a framework for making our commitments to racial justice actionable, a framework that moves from narrating confessional accounts to articulating our commitments and then acting on them through both self-work and work-with-others, a dialectic possibility we identify and explore. We model a method for moving beyond originary confessional narratives and engage in dialogue with the willingness to be disturbed, (Wheatley, 2002) believing that disturbances are productive places from which we can more clearly articulate and act from our commitments. Drawing on our own experiences, we engage the political, systemic, and enduring nature of racism as we together chart an educational frame that counters the macro-logics of oppression enacted daily through micro-inequities. As we advocate for additional and ongoing considerations of the work of anti-racism in educational settings, we invite others to embrace, along with us, both the willingness to be disturbed and the attention to making commitments actionable

A Multi-Dimensional Pedagogy for Racial Justice in Writing Centers

In light of disciplinary conversations and increased attention to anti-racism in writing centers, we see a disciplinary mandate for writing centers to better articulate a pedagogy for racial justice that informs our everyday work, including but not limited to tutoring practice. This mandate, we believe, involves asking: How do we make actionable our commitment to racial justice when working with writers one-with-one? What interactional stances and pedagogical moves enact a pedagogy of anti-racism in writing centers? How do we prepare ourselves to enact this pedagogy? Our answers to these questions center around (1) articulating and frequently re-articulating our commitments to racial and social justice and (2) making these commitments actionable through both reflective self-work and action-oriented work-with-others, as we have written in the related article “Making Commitments to Racial Justice Actionable.” This work leads us to argue that a pedagogy of anti-racism must be more than a statement that we abhor racial injustice. Rather, this pedagogy must be multi-dimensional and include a positive and actionable articulation of the “ought to be” that we are aiming toward

A unification-based natural language interface to a database.

An implementation of a Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) natural language front-end to a database is presented, and its capabilities demonstrated by reference to a set of queries used in the Chat-80 system. The potential of LFG for such applications is explored. Other grammars previously used for this purpose are briefly reviewed and contrasted with LFG. The basic LFG formalism is fully described, both as to its syntax and semantics, and the deficiencies of the latter for database access application shown. Other current LFG implementations are reviewed and contrasted with the LFG implementation developed here specifically for database access. The implementation described here allows a natural language interface to a specific Prolog database to be produced from a set of grammar rule and lexical specifications in an LFG-like notation. In addition to this the interface system uses a simple database description to compile metadata about the database for later use in planning the execution of queries. Extensions to LFG's semantic component are shown to be necessary to produce a satisfactory functional analysis and semantic output for querying a database. A diverse set of natural language constructs are analysed using LFG and the derivation of Prolog queries from the F-structure output of LFG is illustrated. The functional description produced from LFG is proposed as sufficient for resolving many problems of quantification and attachment

“Starting from Square One”: Results from the Racial Climate Survey of Writing Center Professional Gatherings

Though the conversation about race and racism in individual writing centers has developed in the last 30 years (Coenen et al., 2019; Condon, 2007; Dees et al., 2007; Denny, 2010; Faison, 2018; García, 2017; Greenfield, 2019; Greenfield & Rowan, 2011; Grimm, 1999; Kern, 2019; Lockett, 2019), scholars rarely discuss the racial climate of writing center professional spaces. This article reports on the findings from the Racial Climate Survey of Writing Center Professional Gatherings. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected in spring 2019, when participants were asked about their experiences and perceptions of the racial climate of international, national, regional, and local writing center professional gatherings during the 2017–2018 academic year. Results show a statistically significant difference between White participants and BIPOC participants in relation to experiences of racial microaggressions, tensions/comfort in professional gatherings, and experiences in sessions about race/racism. Across multiple survey questions, the lack of diversity noted by participants was one of the most significant factors shaping their experiences of the racial climate of writing center professional gatherings. Based on the results, suggestions for how to improve the racial climate of writing center professional gatherings are provided

Enacting a Culture of Access in Our Conference Spaces

The article offers information on periodical\u27s rhetoric and writing studies conference held in September 2020. Topics discussed include prioritizing access in the service of love, justice, connection and liberation; proposing expansive frameworks for access in designing accessible writing classrooms and professional events; and major principles of definition of access, which reflect access\u27s complexity and liberatory potential such as dynamic, relational and intersectional

Clinical outcomes and response to treatment of patients receiving topical treatments for pyoderma gangrenosum: a prospective cohort study

Background: pyoderma gangrenosum (PG) is an uncommon dermatosis with a limited evidence base for treatment. Objective: to estimate the effectiveness of topical therapies in the treatment of PG. Methods: prospective cohort study of UK secondary care patients with a clinical diagnosis of PG suitable for topical treatment (recruited July 2009 to June 2012). Participants received topical therapy following normal clinical practice (mainly Class I-III topical corticosteroids, tacrolimus 0.03% or 0.1%). Primary outcome: speed of healing at 6 weeks. Secondary outcomes: proportion healed by 6 months; time to healing; global assessment; inflammation; pain; quality-of-life; treatment failure and recurrence. Results: Sixty-six patients (22 to 85 years) were enrolled. Clobetasol propionate 0.05% was the most commonly prescribed therapy. Overall, 28/66 (43.8%) of ulcers healed by 6 months. Median time-to-healing was 145 days (95% CI: 96 days, ∞). Initial ulcer size was a significant predictor of time-to-healing (hazard ratio 0.94 (0.88;80 1.00); p = 0.043). Four patients (15%) had a recurrence. Limitations: No randomised comparator Conclusion: Topical therapy is potentially an effective first-line treatment for PG that avoids possible side effects associated with systemic therapy. It remains unclear whether more severe disease will respond adequately to topical therapy alone

The association between treatment adherence to nicotine patches and smoking cessation in pregnancy: a secondary analysis of a randomised controlled trial

IntroductionIn non-pregnant ‘quitters’, adherence to nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) increases smoking cessation. We investigated relationships between adherence to placebo or NRT patches and cessation in pregnancy, including an assessment of reverse causation and whether any adherence: cessation relationship is moderated when using nicotine or placebo patches. MethodsUsing data from 1050 pregnant trial participants, regression models investigated associations between maternal characteristics, adherence and smoking cessation. ResultsAdherence during the first month was associated with lower baseline cotinine concentrations (beta -0.08, 95%CI -0.15 to -0.01) and randomisation to NRT (beta 2.59, 95%CI 1.50 to 3.68). Adherence during both treatment months was associated with being randomised to NRT (beta 0.51, 95%CI 0.29 to 0.72) and inversely associated with higher nicotine dependence. Adherence with either NRT or placebo was associated with cessation at one month (OR 1.11, 95%CI 1.08 to 1.13) and delivery (OR 1.06, 95%CI 1.03 to 1.09), but no such association was observed in the subgroup where reverse causation was not possible. Amongst all women, greater adherence to nicotine patches was associated with increased cessation (OR 2.47, 95%CI 1.32 to 4.63) but greater adherence to placebo was not (OR 0.98, 95%CI: 0.44 to 2.18). ConclusionWomen who were more adherent to NRT were more likely to achieve abstinence; more nicotine dependent women probably showed lower adherence to NRT because they relapsed to smoking more quickly. The interaction between nicotine-containing patches and adherence for cessation suggests that the association between adherence with nicotine patches and cessation may be partly causal

Large-scale server-side infrastructure for e-learning: development, design and experiences

The rapid growth of E-business has greatly increased the demand for technology graduates with experience in server-side technology and has thus become an increasingly important area for educators. Server-side skills are in increasing demand and recognised to be of relatively greater value than comparable client-side aspects (Ehie, 2002; e-skills 2011). In response to this many educational organisations have developed E-business courses, but their approaches cannot generally be applied in the distance learning context. Here the design, development, and subsequent experiences of a scalable architecture for the provision of a set of server-side applications to a very large number of students are described. This infrastructure is intended to allow students to gain valuable experience of server side technology such as directory services, deployment, and management of Web services and other administrative applications. Whilst students can be supported in installing the server software used in courses on their own machines, it is not possible to guarantee that this type of sophisticated software will function on such a wide range of platforms and in the context of other conflicting software, without very prolonged intervention, which is not practical within the timescales of a course. To allow server side aspects to be included as a component of the course’s assessment with some fairness it is necessary to guarantee students access to such facilities even if this is not possible on a student’s own machine

Towards a portable platform for language research and engineering

This paper provides an overview of the Advanced Linguistic Engineering Platform (ALEP), an initiative of the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) to provide the natural language research and engineering community in Europe with a versatile and flexible general purpose development environment. The current prototype, its status, results and future plans for this environment are outlined. The architecture of the platform which is intended to support cooperation, exchange and re-use of results and resources, comparative evaluation and application prototyping, is also detailed