A Descriptive Analysis of Language and Cognition in Congenitally Blind Children Ages 3 Through 9

Purpose This study was designed as an investigation of the semantic and cognitive functioning of congenitally blind children within the age range of 3 through 9 years, to help fill the gap in the existing research concerning the early development of the visually handicapped. Delays in cognitive development among school age congenitally blind children have been attributed to the limitations imposed by blindness on mobility and interaction with objects and events in the environment. It has been assumed that blind children must rely on less efficient sensory perception and discrimination processes resulting in a conceptualization of the world which may be inconsistent, incomplete, or significantly different from that of sighted children. If the object concept differs for blind children, the meaning of words used to refer to those objects could be expected to differ from the meanings assigned by sighted children. Problems in word meaning and concept development—and hence, in communication—are an important consideration in mainstreaming efforts in the public schools. Consequently, the present study sought to explore linguistic and cognitive representation of common objects among blind children, along with their understanding and use of dimensional concepts in dealing with those objects. Procedure Ten totally and congenitally blind children and ten sighted children of matching age, sex, and socioeconomic status were interviewed individually following a prescribed format. By means of these structured interviews, information was gathered concerning the cognitive functioning of each child, and responses were secured to the lexical semantic tasks. These tasks focused on verbally and tactually derived attributions for selected objects defined as more tangible and less tangible, as well as measures of receptive and expressive use of comparative adjectives of dimension. Conclusions 1. This analysis suggested that the information gained through tactual means does not differ significantly from that gained through vision. The meaning of common words, and the underlying object concept reflected through the children\u27s attributions, did not appear to be significantly altered by the absence of vision. The younger blind children were found to have an accurate, albeit shallow conception of the less tangible objects, probably as a result of reduced opportunity for meaningful interaction/exploration with those objects. 2. The total number of attributions by the sighted children was not significantly larger than that of the blind children. Much similarity in the kind of attributes used was noted between vision groups. The number of visually oriented attributes mentioned by the blind children was extremely small compared to the total number of attributes used. It was concluded, therefore, that the language of the blind children was based on the object concept they had developed through tactual experience, rather than being a reflection of the language of sighted children. 3. Cognitive delay was evident among the older blind children, leading to the observation that the entire group was functioning at a preoperational level of cognitive development. The blind children\u27s attributions revealed a tactually based conceptualization of the world that was related to their personal experience, but which was not found to differ significantly from the visually based conceptualization of the sighted children. In fact, the mental image/object concepts for both vision groups appeared to draw heavily on egocentric and functional characteristics of the objects. 4. Communication between blind and sighted children regarding the objects used in this study did not appear to be seriously disrupted by the absence of vision. However, the importance of assisting blind children to develop effective and systematic methods for gathering and organizing information through tactual means was underscored. The results of this study emphasize the need for blind children to experience objects and events first hand

Rotatory Dislocation of the Patella:

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Experimental Tests of General Relativity

Einstein's general theory of relativity is the standard theory of gravity, especially where the needs of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics are concerned. As such, this theory is used for many practical purposes involving spacecraft navigation, geodesy, and time transfer. Here I review the foundations of general relativity, discuss recent progress in the tests of relativistic gravity in the solar system, and present motivations for the new generation of high-accuracy gravitational experiments. I discuss the advances in our understanding of fundamental physics that are anticipated in the near future and evaluate the discovery potential of the recently proposed gravitational experiments.Comment: revtex4, 30 pages, 10 figure

The spirit of sport: the case for criminalisation of doping in the UK

This article examines public perceptions of doping in sport, critically evaluates the effectiveness of current anti-doping sanctions and proposes the criminalisation of doping in sport in the UK as part of a growing global movement towards such criminalisation at national level. Criminalising doping is advanced on two main grounds: as a stigmatic deterrent and as a form of retributive punishment enforced through the criminal justice system. The ‘spirit of sport’ defined by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) as being based on the values of ethics, health and fair-play is identified as being undermined by the ineffectiveness of existing anti-doping policy in the current climate of doping revelations, and is assessed as relevant to public perceptions and the future of sport as a whole. The harm-reductionist approach permitting the use of certain performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) is considered as an alternative to anti-doping, taking into account athlete psychology, the problems encountered in containing doping in sport through anti-doping measures and the effect of these difficulties on the ‘spirit of sport’. This approach is dismissed in favour of criminalising doping in sport based on the offence of fraud. It will be argued that the criminalisation of doping could act as a greater deterrent than existing sanctions imposed by International Federations, and, when used in conjunction with those sanctions, will raise the overall ‘price’ of doping. The revelations of corruption within the existing system of self-governance within sport have contributed to a disbelieving public and it will be argued that the criminalisation of doping in sport could assist in satisfying the public that justice is being done and in turn achieve greater belief in the truth of athletic performances

A rapid and sensitive method for measuring cell adhesion

We have adapted the CyQuant® assay to provide a simple, rapid, sensitive and highly reproducible method for measuring cell adhesion. The modified CyQuant® assay eliminates the requirement for labour intensive fluorescent labelling protocols prior to experimentation and has the sensitivity to measure small numbers (>1000) of adherent cells

Tackling Exascale Software Challenges in Molecular Dynamics Simulations with GROMACS

GROMACS is a widely used package for biomolecular simulation, and over the last two decades it has evolved from small-scale efficiency to advanced heterogeneous acceleration and multi-level parallelism targeting some of the largest supercomputers in the world. Here, we describe some of the ways we have been able to realize this through the use of parallelization on all levels, combined with a constant focus on absolute performance. Release 4.6 of GROMACS uses SIMD acceleration on a wide range of architectures, GPU offloading acceleration, and both OpenMP and MPI parallelism within and between nodes, respectively. The recent work on acceleration made it necessary to revisit the fundamental algorithms of molecular simulation, including the concept of neighborsearching, and we discuss the present and future challenges we see for exascale simulation - in particular a very fine-grained task parallelism. We also discuss the software management, code peer review and continuous integration testing required for a project of this complexity.Comment: EASC 2014 conference proceedin

Upper limits from the LIGO and TAMA detectors on the rate of gravitational-wave bursts

We report on the first joint search for gravitational waves by the TAMA and LIGO collaborations. We looked for millisecond-duration unmodeled gravitational-wave bursts in 473 hr of coincident data collected during early 2003. No candidate signals were found. We set an upper limit of 0.12 events per day on the rate of detectable gravitational-wave bursts, at 90% confidence level. From software simulations, we estimate that our detector network was sensitive to bursts with root-sum-square strain amplitude above approximately 1–3×10−19  Hz−1/2 in the frequency band 700-2000 Hz. We describe the details of this collaborative search, with particular emphasis on its advantages and disadvantages compared to searches by LIGO and TAMA separately using the same data. Benefits include a lower background and longer observation time, at some cost in sensitivity and bandwidth. We also demonstrate techniques for performing coincidence searches with a heterogeneous network of detectors with different noise spectra and orientations. These techniques include using coordinated software signal injections to estimate the network sensitivity, and tuning the analysis to maximize the sensitivity and the livetime, subject to constraints on the background

Joint LIGO and TAMA300 Search for Gravitational Waves from Inspiralling Neutron Star Binaries

We search for coincident gravitational wave signals from inspiralling neutron star binaries using LIGO and TAMA300 data taken during early 2003. Using a simple trigger exchange method, we perform an intercollaboration coincidence search during times when TAMA300 and only one of the LIGO sites were operational. We find no evidence of any gravitational wave signals. We place an observational upper limit on the rate of binary neutron star coalescence with component masses between 1 and 3M⊙ of 49 per year per Milky Way equivalent galaxy at a 90% confidence level. The methods developed during this search will find application in future network inspiral analyses

Contemporary factors shaping the professional identity of occupational therapy lecturers

Introduction The contemporary factors of neoliberalism and evidence based practice (EBP) have implications for professional autonomy and values, education and training, ways of working and construction of knowledge. Occupational therapy lecturers are at the interface between student education and professional practice and therefore have unique insights into the way in which these factors are shaping their professional identity and that of the profession. Method Nine narrative inquiry focused interviews of occupational therapy lecturers from two universities were carried out. Data was interpreted through a Bourdieusian lens, of professional habitus, and analysed thematically. Findings The main factors influencing occupational therapy lecturer identity were noted to be relationships between professional identity and artistry; the professional body of knowledge and language; evidencing practice, neoliberalism and changes to teaching and learning. Conclusion 2 The structural factors of neoliberalism, EBP and associated policies are influencing the occupational therapy professional habitus and in turn occupational therapy lecturers’ professional identity. An effective critique of these structural factors is required to maintain the profession’s values and artistry and the knowledge upon which occupational therapy lecturers’ identity is formed and their approaches to teaching and learning are based