Reading School: Teaching and the Educational Environment From a Semiotic Perspective

School, teaching, and the educational environment (including the physical surroundings and use of space in classrooms), are viewed in this thesis as a complex and dynamic milieu which is capable of generating meaning to children. Implicit in this notion of a complex milieu is the assumption that learned social and cultural knowledge play a major part in the generation of meaning in school, serving to both explain and reinforce school meaning. The theoretical basis for this perspective is semiotics, the study of signs and sign systems. The thesis is divided into four main parts which deal, respectively, with semiotics and communication (the subject matter of Chapters One and Two), and teaching and teacher training (the subject matter of Chapter Three.) It is suggested that the video which accompanies this thesis, What do YOU Mean?, produced for the Scottish Education Department and intended for in-service teacher training, should be referred to when reading this section of the thesis. The fourth part concerns the educational environment (the subject-matter of Chapter Four). The thesis is exploratory in nature and the hope is expressed that it will encourage further exploration

Meeting the Needs of Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents through Home Visiting

Pregnant and parenting adolescents* face the dual challenge of raising a child while navigating their own path to adulthood. Many encounter barriers related to child care, housing, and health care that can limit their job and educational opportunities. Some experience judgment and bias at home and in the community. Despite these setbacks, some adolescents view parenthood as a positive life event that bolsters their sense of responsibility and stability.** Many home visiting models support first-time parents or parents with complex needs. The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program identifies women under 21 as a priority service group. More can be done, however, to offer age-appropriate, engaging, and respectful home visiting services for adolescents.This Innovation Roundup Brief highlights home visiting models, affiliates, and initiatives serving young parents' needs:Teen Parent Connection: A Healthy Families America AffiliateFamily SpiritNurse-Family PartnershipShow Me Strong Families (SMSF): A Parents as Teachers InitiativeIt concludes with key service delivery features for consideration by other programs

Anxiety-like behaviour is regulated independently from sex, mating status, and the sex peptide receptor in Drosophila melanogaster

Sex differences in anxiety-related behaviours have been documented in many animals and are notable in human populations. A major goal in behaviour research is to understand why and how sex differences in cognitive-emotional states like anxiety arise and are regulated throughout life. Anxiety allows individuals to detect and respond to threats. Mating is a candidate regulator for anxiety because threats are likely to change, often in sex-specific ways, when individuals shift to a postmating reproductive state. However, we know little about how mating mediates anxiety-related behaviour in males and females, or about how males might influence female anxiety via seminal proteins transferred during mating. To address this gap, we examined anxiety-related behaviour in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, an emerging model animal for anxiety, with respect to sex, mating and sex peptide, a seminal protein known to modulate a host of female postmating responses in fruit flies. We assayed anxiety-like behaviour using the open-field assay to assess individual avoidance of the interior of an arena (‘wall-following’ behaviour). We found sex differences in activity level, but no evidence for sex differences in wall-following behaviour. We found no effects of mating in either sex, or of the presence of the sex peptide receptor in females, on wall following. Our results suggest that anxiety is not one of the cognitive-emotional states regulated by mating and sex peptide in fruit flies, and that researchers need an alternative model for sex differences in anxiety

Kelyphite textures experimentally reproduced through garnet breakdown in the presence of a melt phase

Complex multiphase reaction rims that form during garnet breakdown are known as kelyphite coronae and are common amongst exhumed mantle xenoliths. It has long been established that a reaction of garnet and olivine produces kelyphite corona consisting of spinel and pyroxenes, and that preservation of high-pressure garnet cores requires sufficiently rapid uplift of material through the spinel lherzolite stability field from depths of at least 60 km.We present new high-pressure, high-temperature experiments of garnet breakdown in the spinel-lherzolite stability field demonstrating that a series of cascading reactions can reproduce the multilayer, multiphase kelyphites seen in nature. In all experiments where breakdown occurred, a melt appears to have moderated the reactions towards equilibrium; we believe this to be the first experimental confirmation of the importance of such melts in garnet breakdown reactions. In our experiments at least three distinct zones of concentric kelyphite growth can occur at a single pressure, temperature condition; we suggest, therefore, that such kelyphites seen in natural samples do not have to be caused by a multistage uplift path as is often assumed.Kelyphitic coronae surrounding garnet have previously been used to estimate uplift rates, however, the lack of kinetic data for relevant exhumation reactions has limited their use for PTt pathway estimations and the understanding of emplacement mechanisms. In order to constrain accurate PTt pathways we use reaction rim thickness as a proxy for reaction progress and present preliminary results for the kinetics of garnet breakdown

Predicting tropical tree mortality with leaf spectroscopy

Do tropical trees close to death have a distinct change to their leaf spectral signature? Tree mortality rates have been increasing in tropical forests, reducing the global carbon sink. Upcoming hyperspectral satellites could be used to predict regions close to experiencing extensive tree mortality during periods of stress, such as drought. Here we show, for a tropical rainforest in Borneo, how imminent tropical tree mortality impacts leaf physiological traits and reflectance. We measured leaf reflectance (400–2500 nm), light-saturated photosynthesis (Asat), leaf dark respiration (Rdark), leaf mass area (LMA), and % leaf water across five campaigns in a six-month period during which there were two causes of tree mortality: a major natural drought and a co-incident tree stem girdling treatment. We find that prior to mortality, there were significant (p < 0.05) leaf spectral changes in the red (650–700 nm), the NIR (1,000–1,400 nm), and SWIR bands (2,000–2,400 nm) and significant reductions in the potential carbon balance of the leaves (increased Rdark and reduced Asat). We show that the partial least squares regression technique can predict mortality in tropical trees across different species and functional groups with medium precision but low accuracy (r2 of .65 and RMSE/mean of 0.58). However, most tree death in our study was due to girdling, which is not a natural form of death. More research is needed to determine if this spectroscopy technique can be applied to tropical forests in general

Annual Cycle of Turbulent Dissipation Estimated from Seagliders

The rate of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy is estimated using Seaglider observations of vertical water velocity in the midlatitude North Atlantic. This estimate is based on the large‐eddy method, allowing the use of measurements of turbulent energy at large scales O(1–10 m) to diagnose the rate of energy dissipated through viscous processes at scales O(1 mm). The Seaglider data considered here were obtained in a region of high stratification (1 × 10−4<N < 1×10−2s−1), where previous implementations of this method fail. The large‐eddy method is generalized to high‐stratification by high‐pass filtering vertical velocity with a cutoff dependent on the local buoyancy frequency, producing a year‐long time series of dissipation rate spanning the uppermost 1,000 m with subdaily resolution. This is compared to the dissipation rate estimated from a moored 600 kHz acoustic Doppler current profiler. The variability of the Seaglider‐based dissipation correlates with one‐dimensional scalings of wind‐ and buoyancy‐driven mixed‐layer turbulence. Plain Language Summary Measuring ocean turbulence is crucial for understanding how heat and carbon dioxide are transferred from the atmosphere to the deep ocean. However, measurements of ocean turbulence are sparse. Here autonomous Seagliders are used to estimate turbulence in the surface kilometer of the North Atlantic Ocean. Using an estimate of the vertical water velocity from the flight of the Seaglider through the water, we estimate turbulence by assuming the energy of the largest turbulent fluctuations is representative of the energy dissipated at molecular scales. This approach has been used previously in an ocean region where the vertical gradient of density is small. Our results show that this previous approach fails when the vertical density gradient increases, as it does not account for other processes that are unrelated to turbulence. We introduce a generalized method that isolates only the turbulent processes by accounting for the strength of the vertical density gradient. We show that this new estimate agrees with other turbulence measurements. Our estimate also agrees well with a simple estimates of turbulence from atmospheric processes. This study therefore presents method that can be applied to existing and new Seaglider data to greatly increase our measurements of ocean turbulence

Genetic characterisation of human Coxsackievirus A6 variants associated with atypical hand, foot and mouth disease; a potential role of recombination in emergence and pathogenicity

Human coxsackievirus A6 (CVA6) is an enterically transmitted enterovirus. Until recently, CVA6 infections were considered as being of minor clinical significance, and only rarely aetiologically linked with hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) associated with other species A enteroviruses (particularly EV71 and CVA16). From 2008 onwards, however, CVA6 infections have been associated with several outbreaks worldwide of atypical HFMD (aHFMD) accompanied by a varicelliform rash. We recently reported CVA6-associated eczema herpeticum occurring predominantly in children and young adults in Edinburgh in January and February 2014. To investigate genetic determinants of novel clinical phenotypes of CVA6, we genetically characterized and analysed CVA6 variants associated with eczema herpeticum in Edinburgh in 2014 and those with aHFMD in CAV isolates collected from 2008. A total of eight recombinant forms (RFs) have circulated worldwide over the past 10 years, with the particularly recent appearance of RF-H associated with eczema herpeticum cases in Edinburgh in 2014. Comparison of phylogenies and divergence of complete genome sequences of CVA6 identified recombination breakpoints in 2A–2C, within VP3, and between 5′ untranslated region and VP1. A Bayesian temporal reconstruction of CVA6 evolution since 2004 provided estimates of dates and the actual recombination events that generated more recently appearing recombination groups (RF-E, -F, -G and -H). Associations were observed between recombination groups and clinical presentations of herpangina, aHFMD and eczema herpeticum, but not with VP1 or other structural genes. These observations provided evidence that NS gene regions may potentially contribute to clinical phenotypes and outcomes of CVA6 infection

Land degradation neutrality: testing the indicator in a temperate agricultural landscape

Land degradation directly affects around 25% of land globally, undermining progress on most of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), particularly target 15.3. To assess land degradation, SDG indicator 15.3.1 combines sub-indicators of productivity, soil carbon and land cover. Over 100 countries have set Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) targets. Here, we demonstrate application of the indicator for a well-established agricultural landscape using the case study of Great Britain. We explore detection of degradation in such landscapes by: 1) transparently evaluating land cover transitions; 2) comparing assessments using global and national data; 3) identifying misleading trends; and 4) including extra sub-indicators for additional forms of degradation. Our results demonstrate significant impacts on the indicator both from the land cover transition evaluation and choice or availability of data. Critically, we identify a misleading improvement trend due to a trade-off between improvement detected by the productivity sub-indicator, and 30-year soil carbon loss trends in croplands (11% from 1978 to 2007). This carbon loss trend would not be identified without additional data from Countryside Survey (CS). Thus, without incorporating field survey data we risk overlooking the degradation of regulating and supporting ecosystem services (linked to soil carbon), in favour of signals from improving provisioning services (productivity sub-indicator). Relative importance of these services will vary between socioeconomic contexts. Including extra sub-indicators for erosion or critical load exceedance, as additional forms of degradation, produced a switch from net area improving (9%) to net area degraded (58%). CS data also identified additional degradation for soil health, including 44% arable soils exceeding bulk density thresholds and 35% of CS squares exceeding contamination thresholds for metals