Social Inclusion Through Multilingual Assistants in Additional Language Learning

The aim of this study is to evaluate and explore the deployment of adult migrants' first languages (L1s) by multilingual assistants (MAs) in additional language (AL) learning for the opportunities they afford to include students. The context is Sweden's Swedish for Immigrants programme, in which a teacher team appointed MAs to support their students’ efforts to learn Swedish. In this context, MAs aremultilingual school personnel employed to support the students in their Swedish language development by, among other means, using the students' L1s. The ensuing research study set out to investigate and develop MA and teacher roles in promoting Swedish language development through L1 use. The quest to include the students permeated this investigation. Action research provided a framework for the teachers to study their classroom interaction with MAs as a basis for professional development. Group interviews complemented video data. Different dimensions of inclusion and Bakhtin’s thinking about other‐orientedness offer theoretical support. The results are presented as four cardinal contributions made by MAs with significant potential to include adult migrants in AL education. The teachers' conception of dialogic activity specifies inclusion as a transsubjective enterprise that, through instructional restraint and translingual space, allows students to explore language and achieve progressively coherent responsive understanding. The MAs' socioemotional work of reassuring, affirming, and imparting faith in student capabilities to communicate in and learn Swedish posits inclusion as an equilibrium between the demands of instructional situations and the psychological fortitude to manage them. MAs key role in contextualizing content illustrates the way inclusion can be realized by transferring language form and content to the students' personal experiences, extensive knowledge, and everyday communicative realities. The teacher's plan to entrust the MAs with the task of making their formative feedback accessible to students projects inclusion as increasing students’ capacity to regulate their AL learning themselves

Eros, Paideia and Arete: The lesson of Plato\u27s symposium

Commentators of Plato\u27s Symposium rarely recognize the importance of traditional Greek conceptions of Eros, paideia and arete in understanding Plato\u27s critique of the various educational models presented in the dialogue. I will show how Plato contests these models by proposing that education should consist of philosophy. On this interpretation, ancient Greek pedagogy culminates in a philosophical education. For this new form of education, the dialogical model supplants the traditional practices of kleos and poetic mimsis, inextricably bound to archaia paideia and traditional forms of education. Plato\u27s Socrates is searching for knowledge and immortality through an application of the philosophical method, one that relies on a conception of Eros and propagation. For Plato\u27s Socrates, it is through Eros that ancient Greek paideia educates in matters of arete, but eros is not a passion for kleos or for a beautiful young man

Heritability and genome-wide analyses of problematic peer relationships during childhood and adolescence

Peer behaviour plays an important role in the development of social adjustment, though little is known about its genetic architecture. We conducted a twin study combined with a genome-wide complex trait analysis (GCTA) and a genome-wide screen to characterise genetic influences on problematic peer behaviour during childhood and adolescence. This included a series of longitudinal measures (parent-reported Strengths-and-Difficulties Questionnaire) from a UK population-based birth-cohort (ALSPAC, 4–17 years), and a UK twin sample (TEDS, 4–11 years). Longitudinal twin analysis (TEDS; N ≤ 7,366 twin pairs) showed that peer problems in childhood are heritable (4–11 years, 0.60 < twin-h 2 ≤ 0.71) but genetically heterogeneous from age to age (4–11 years, twin-r g = 0.30). GCTA (ALSPAC: N ≤ 5,608, TEDS: N ≤ 2,691) provided furthermore little support for the contribution of measured common genetic variants during childhood (4–12 years, 0.02<GCTA−h2Meta ≤ 0.11) though these influences become stronger in adolescence (13–17 years, 0.14<GCTA−h2ALSPAC ≤ 0.27). A subsequent cross-sectional genome-wide screen in ALSPAC (N ≤ 6,000) focussed on peer problems with the highest GCTA-heritability (10, 13 and 17 years, 0.0002 < GCTA-P ≤ 0.03). Single variant signals (P ≤ 10−5) were followed up in TEDS (N ≤ 2835, 9 and 11 years) and, in search for autism quantitative trait loci, explored within two autism samples (AGRE: N Pedigrees = 793; ACC: N Cases = 1,453/N Controls = 7,070). There was, however, no evidence for association in TEDS and little evidence for an overlap with the autistic continuum. In summary, our findings suggest that problematic peer relationships are heritable but genetically complex and heterogeneous from age to age, with an increase in common measurable genetic variation during adolescence

Direct Estimate of Lateral Eddy Diffusivity Upstream of Drake Passage

The first direct estimate of the rate at which geostrophic turbulence mixes tracers across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current is presented. The estimate is computed from the spreading of a tracer released upstream of Drake Passage as part of the Diapycnal and Isopycnal Mixing Experiment in the Southern Ocean (DIMES). The meridional eddy diffusivity, a measure of the rate at which the area of the tracer spreads along an isopycnal across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, is 710 ± 260 m[superscript 2] s[superscript −1] at 1500-m depth. The estimate is based on an extrapolation of the tracer-based diffusivity using output from numerical tracers released in a one-twentieth of a degree model simulation of the circulation and turbulence in the Drake Passage region. The model is shown to reproduce the observed spreading rate of the DIMES tracer and suggests that the meridional eddy diffusivity is weak in the upper kilometer of the water column with values below 500 m[superscript 2] s[superscript −1] and peaks at the steering level, near 2 km, where the eddy phase speed is equal to the mean flow speed. These vertical variations are not captured by ocean models presently used for climate studies, but they significantly affect the ventilation of different water masses.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award OCE-1233832)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award OCE-1232962)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award OCE-1048926

Writing in Britain and Ireland, c. 400 to c. 800

No abstract available

Methionine Sulfoxide Reductases Are Essential for Virulence of Salmonella Typhimurium

Production of reactive oxygen species represents a fundamental innate defense against microbes in a diversity of host organisms. Oxidative stress, amongst others, converts peptidyl and free methionine to a mixture of methionine-S- (Met-S-SO) and methionine-R-sulfoxides (Met-R-SO). To cope with such oxidative damage, methionine sulfoxide reductases MsrA and MsrB are known to reduce MetSOs, the former being specific for the S-form and the latter being specific for the R-form. However, at present the role of methionine sulfoxide reductases in the pathogenesis of intracellular bacterial pathogens has not been fully detailed. Here we show that deletion of msrA in the facultative intracellular pathogen Salmonella (S.) enterica serovar Typhimurium increased susceptibility to exogenous H2O2, and reduced bacterial replication inside activated macrophages, and in mice. In contrast, a ΔmsrB mutant showed the wild type phenotype. Recombinant MsrA was active against free and peptidyl Met-S-SO, whereas recombinant MsrB was only weakly active and specific for peptidyl Met-R-SO. This raised the question of whether an additional Met-R-SO reductase could play a role in the oxidative stress response of S. Typhimurium. MsrC is a methionine sulfoxide reductase previously shown to be specific for free Met-R-SO in Escherichia (E.) coli. We tested a ΔmsrC single mutant and a ΔmsrBΔmsrC double mutant under various stress conditions, and found that MsrC is essential for survival of S. Typhimurium following exposure to H2O2, as well as for growth in macrophages, and in mice. Hence, this study demonstrates that all three methionine sulfoxide reductases, MsrA, MsrB and MsrC, facilitate growth of a canonical intracellular pathogen during infection. Interestingly MsrC is specific for the repair of free methionine sulfoxide, pointing to an important role of this pathway in the oxidative stress response of Salmonella Typhimurium

Search for supersymmetry in events with b-quark jets and missing transverse energy in pp collisions at 7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for physics beyond the standard model based on events with large missing transverse energy, at least three jets, and at least one, two, or three b-quark jets. The study is performed using a sample of proton-proton collision data collected at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC in 2011. The integrated luminosity of the sample is 4.98 inverse femtobarns. The observed number of events is found to be consistent with the standard model expectation, which is evaluated using control samples in the data. The results are used to constrain cross sections for the production of supersymmetric particles decaying to b-quark-enriched final states in the context of simplified model spectra.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review