The relationship between otitis media and literacy outcomes of urban indigenous Australian school children

The literacy skills of 57 Indigenous Australian early-school students in Perth were compared by their ear health status where hearing loss (HL) and otitis media (OM) (highly prevalent in the population) was tested up to five times in the year prior to the culturally modified literacy assessment. No significant differences were found. The students showed overall improvement on all outcomes following a 15 hour targeted phonological awareness intervention. No differences in improvement were shown between the children with and without OM/HL

A meta-analysis of cross sectional studies investigating language in maltreated children

Purpose: In this review article, meta-analysis was used to summarize research investigating language skills in maltreated children. Method: A systematic search of published studies was undertaken. Studies were included in the meta-analysis if they investigated language skills in groups comprising maltreated and nonmaltreated children. Studies were selected if these 2 groups of children were of comparable age and from a similar socioeconomic background. Results: A total of 26 studies were identified that met the inclusion criteria. Results from the meta-analysis showed that maltreated children demonstrated consistently poorer language skills with respect to receptive vocabulary (k = 19; standardized mean difference [SMD] = .463; 95% confidence interval [CI; .293, .634]; p < .001), expressive language (k = 4; SMD =.860; 95% CI [.557, 1.163]; p < .001), and receptive language (k = 9; SMD =.528; 95% CI [.220, .837]; p < .001). Conclusion: Together, these results indicate a reliable association between child maltreatment and poor language skills

Solar wind contributions to Earth’s oceans

The isotopic composition of water in Earth’s oceans is challenging to recreate using a plausible mixture of known extraterrestrial sources such as asteroids—an additional isotopically light reservoir is required. The Sun’s solar wind could provide an answer to balance Earth’s water budget. We used atom probe tomography to directly observe an average ~1 mol% enrichment in water and hydroxyls in the solar-wind-irradiated rim of an olivine grain from the S-type asteroid Itokawa. We also experimentally confirm that H+ irradiation of silicate mineral surfaces produces water molecules. These results suggest that the Itokawa regolith could contain ~20 l m−3 of solar-wind-derived water and that such water reservoirs are probably ubiquitous on airless worlds throughout our Galaxy. The production of this isotopically light water reservoir by solar wind implantation into fine-grained silicates may have been a particularly important process in the early Solar System, potentially providing a means to recreate Earth’s current water isotope ratios