Developing empathetic skills among teachers and learners in high schools in Tshwane: An inter-generational approach involving people with dementia

This article describes the implementation and outcomes of an experiential learning approach to facilitate the development of empathetic skills among teachers and learners at two high schools in Tshwane, South Africa. An inter-generational training programme, the Memory Bridge Initiative (MBI), aimed at exposing participants to interactions with older persons with irreversible dementia, was used as a means to develop empathetic skills. Programmes such as MBI have the potential to develop empathetic skills and to cultivate interpersonal and personal skills among the learners and the teachers. Seven learners and six teachers, recruited through non-probability sampling, from two high schools in Tshwane participated in the three-and-a-half-day training programme which serves as the basic training to equip teachers and learners for the implementation of the programme in their respective schools. Focus-group discussions were conducted with the teachers and the learners separately before and after exposure to the MBI programme. Both learners and teachers agreed that the programme contributed to their interpersonal and personal development. Learners also adopted a more positive way of perceiving older persons and people with Alzheimer’s disease. It is recommended that inter-generational programmes should be implemented in more high school settings to determine best practices to develop empathetic skills among learners. Inter-generational programmes could minimise the isolation of older persons with dementia and equip the youth with transferrable skills to educational and work settings

Developing empathetic skills among teachers and learners in high schools in Tshwane: An inter-generational approach involving people with dementia

This article describes the implementation and outcomes of an experiential learning approach to facilitate the development of empathetic skills among teachers and learners at two high schools in Tshwane, South Africa. An inter-generational training programme, the Memory Bridge Initiative (MBI), aimed at exposing participants to interactions with older persons with irreversible dementia, was used as a means to develop empathetic skills. Programmes such as MBI have the potential to develop empathetic skills and to cultivate interpersonal and personal skills among the learners and the teachers. Seven learners and six teachers, recruited through non-probability sampling, from two high schools in Tshwane participated in the three-and-a-half-day training programme which serves as the basic training to equip teachers and learners for the implementation of the programme in their respective schools. Focus-group discussions were conducted with the teachers and the learners separately before and after exposure to the MBI programme. Both learners and teachers agreed that the programme contributed to their interpersonal and personal development. Learners also adopted a more positive way of perceiving older persons and people with Alzheimer’s disease. It is recommended that inter-generational programmes should be implemented in more high school settings to determine best practices to develop empathetic skills among learners. Inter-generational programmes could minimise the isolation of older persons with dementia and equip the youth with transferrable skills to educational and work settings

Forma, estructura y simbolismo: Un proyecto moderno para la Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana de Brasilia

In 1964, a national project contest was organized for the Presbyterian National Church in the newly opened capital of Brazil, Brasilia. The winning project, carried out by the architects Ubirajara Motta Lima Ribeiro and Sergio A.B. Machado presents excellent architectural qualities, inventive composition and an intelligent rationalization of the constructive solution. If it had been built, it would undoubtedly be a masterpiece. The simplicity of the results is based on a limited range of constructive elements, which, however, could bring significant complexity to the architectural spaces, whose design adequately meets the symbolic load of a congregational and sacred space. This article intends to study this modern project a little more, digitally recovering its design and suggesting possible architectural and theoretical interpretations considering the different scales, from the urban condition to the details and tectonic aspects.En 1964 se organizó un concurso nacional de proyectos para la Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana en la recién inaugurada capital de Brasil, Brasilia. El proyecto ganador, realizado por los arquitectos Ubirajara Motta Lima Ribeiro y Sergio A.B. Machado, presenta excelentes cualidades arquitectónicas, inventiva composición y una inteligente racionalización de la solución constructiva. Si se hubiera construido sería, sin duda, una obra maestra. La simplicidad de resultados se apoya en una gama limitada de elementos constructivos, que sin embargo llegarían a aportar una relevante complejidad a los espacios arquitectónicos, cuyo diseño atiende adecuadamente a la carga simbólica de un espacio congregacional y sagrado. Este articulo se propone estudiar un poco más ese proyecto moderno, recuperando digitalmente su diseño y sugiriendo posibles interpretaciones arquitectónicas y teóricas considerando las diversas escalas, desde la condición urbana a los detalles y aspectos tectónicos

Southern Cosmology Survey III: QSO's from Combined GALEX and Optical Photometry

We present catalogs of QSO candidates selected using photometry from GALEX combined with SDSS in the Stripe 82 region and Blanco Cosmology Survey (BCS) near declination -55 degrees. The SDSS region contains ~700 objects with magnitude i < 20 and ~3600 objects with i < 21.5 in a ~60 square degree sky region, while the BCS region contains ~280 objects with magnitude i < 20 and ~2000 objects with i < 21.5 for a 11 square degree sky region that is being observed by three current microwave Sunyaev-Zeldovich surveys. Our QSO catalog is the first one in the BCS region. Deep GALEX exposures (~2000 seconds in FUV and NUV, except in three fields) provide high signal-to-noise photometry in the GALEX bands (FUV, NUV < 24.5 mag). From this data, we select QSO candidates using only GALEX and optical r-band photometry, using the method given by Atlee and Gould (2008). In the Stripe 82 field, 60% (30%) of the GALEX selected QSO's with optical magnitude i<20 (i<21.5) also appear in the Richards et al. (2008) QSO catalog constructed using 5-band optical SDSS photometry. Comparison with the same catalog by Richards et al. shows that the completeness of the sample is approximately 40%(25%). However, for regions of the sky with very low dust extinction, like the BCS 23hr field and the Stripe 82 between 0 and 10 degrees in RA, our completeness is close to 95%, demonstrating that deep GALEX observations are almost as efficient as multi-wavelength observations at finding QSO's. GALEX observations thus provide a viable alternate route to QSO catalogs in sky regions where u-band optical photometry is not available. The full catalog is available at http://www.ice.csic.es/personal/jimenez/PHOTOZComment: Submitted to ApJ

Developing empathetic skills among teachers and learners in high schools in Tshwane : an inter-generational approach involving people with dementia

141 Developing empathetic skills among teachers and learners in high schools in Tshwane: An inter-generational approach involving people with dementia Erna Alant Stephan Geyer Michael Verde This article describes the implementation and outcomes of an experiential learning approach to facilitate the development of empathetic skills among teachers and learners at two high schools in Tshwane, South Africa. An inter-generational training programme, the Memory Bridge Initiative (MBI), aimed at exposing participants to interactions with older persons with irreversible dementia, was used as a means to develop empathetic skills. Programmes such as MBI have the potential to develop empathetic skills and to cultivate interpersonal and personal skills among the learners and the teachers. Seven learners and six teachers, recruited through non-probability sampling, from two high schools in Tshwane participated in the three-and-a-half-day training programme which serves as the basic training to equip teachers and learners for the implementation of the programme in their respective schools. Focus-group discussions were conducted with the teachers and the learners separately before and after exposure to the MBI programme. Both learners and teachers agreed that the programme contributed to their interpersonal and personal development. Learners also adopted a more positive way of perceiving older persons and people with Alzheimer’s disease. It is recommended that inter-generational programmes should be implemented in more high school settings to determine best practices to develop empathetic skills among learners. Inter-generational programmes could minimise the isolation of older persons with dementia and equip the youth with transferrable skills to educational and work settings.The Fund for the Advancement of Peace and Education : Creative Paths to Peace, School of Education, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.http://www.perspectives-in-education.comam201

Improving Photometric Redshifts using GALEX Observations for the SDSS Stripe 82 and the Next Generation of SZ Cluster Surveys

Four large-area Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) experiments -- APEX-SZ, SPT, ACT, and Planck -- promise to detect clusters of galaxies through the distortion of Cosmic Microwave Background photons by hot (> 10^6 K) cluster gas (the SZ effect) over thousands of square degrees. A large observational follow-up effort to obtain redshifts for these SZ-detected clusters is under way. Given the large area covered by these surveys, most of the redshifts will be obtained via the photometric redshift (photo-z) technique. Here we demonstrate, in an application using ~3000 SDSS stripe 82 galaxies with r<20, how the addition of GALEX photometry (FUV, NUV) greatly improves the photometric redshifts of galaxies obtained with optical griz or ugriz photometry. In the case where large spectroscopic training sets are available, empirical neural-network-based techniques (e.g., ANNz) can yield a photo-z scatter of $\sigma_z = 0.018 (1+z)$. If large spectroscopic training sets are not available, the addition of GALEX data makes possible the use simple maximum likelihood techniques, without resorting to Bayesian priors, and obtains $\sigma_z=0.04(1+z)$, accuracy that approaches the accuracy obtained using spectroscopic training of neural networks on ugriz observations. This improvement is especially notable for blue galaxies. To achieve these results, we have developed a new set of high resolution spectral templates based on physical information about the star formation history of galaxies. We envision these templates to be useful for the next generation of photo-z applications. We make our spectral templates and new photo-z catalogs available to the community at http://www.ice.csic.es/personal/jimenez/PHOTOZ .Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

The Ethical Triage and Management Guidelines of the Entrapped and Mangled Extremity in Resource Scarce Environments: A Systematic Literature Review.

ABSTRACTObjective:A systematic literature review (SLR) was performed to elucidate the current triage and treatment of an entrapped or mangled extremity in resource scarce environments (RSEs).Methods:A lead researcher followed the search strategy following inclusion and exclusion criteria. A first reviewer (FR) was randomly assigned sources. One of the 2 lead researchers was the second reviewer (SR). Each determined the level of evidence (LOE) and quality of evidence (QE) from each source. Any differing opinions between the FR and SR were discussed between them, and if differing opinions remained, then a third reviewer (the other lead researcher) discussed the article until a consensus was reached. The final opinion of each article was entered for analysis.Results:Fifty-eight (58) articles were entered into the final study. There was 1 study determined to be LOE 1, 29 LOE 2, and 28 LOE 3, with 15 determined to achieve QE 1, 37 QE 2, and 6 QE 3.Conclusion:This SLR showed that there is a lack of studies producing strong evidence to support the triage and treatment of the mangled extremity in RSE. Therefore, a Delphi process is suggested to adapt and modify current civilian and military triage and treatment guidelines to the RSE

Crawling the Cosmic Network: Exploring the Morphology of Structure in the Galaxy Distribution

Although coherent large-scale structures such as filaments and walls are apparent to the eye in galaxy redshift surveys, they have so far proven difficult to characterize with computer algorithms. This paper presents a procedure that uses the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the Hessian matrix of the galaxy density field to characterize the morphology of large-scale structure. By analysing the smoothed density field and its Hessian matrix, we can determine the types of structure - walls, filaments, or clumps - that dominate the large-scale distribution of galaxies as a function of scale. We have run the algorithm on mock galaxy distributions in a LCDM cosmological N-body simulation and the observed galaxy distributions in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The morphology of structure is similar between the two catalogues, both being filament-dominated on 10-20 h^{-1} Mpc smoothing scales and clump-dominated on 5 h^{-1} Mpc scales. There is evidence for walls in both distributions, but walls are not the dominant structures on scales smaller than ~25 h^{-1} Mpc. Analysis of the simulation suggests that, on a given comoving smoothing scale, structures evolve with time from walls to filaments to clumps, where those found on smaller smoothing scales are further in this progression at a given time.Comment: 37 pages, 14 figures. Accepted to MNRAS