Parsnips in ELT: stepping out of the comfort zone (Vol. 2)

The PARSNIP is, as many of you will know, a reference to all those topics that are commonly left out of the standard ELT coursebook: Politics, Alcohol, Religion, Sex, Narcotics, -Isms, Pork. And it is easy to understand why these things are not included - in simple terms coursebooks are written for the largest possible market and therefore can only ever concentrate on the safest common denominator in terms of topics. You might be able to get away with a discussion on the differences between democratic governments and dictatorships in Portugal, but the chances are you might find it more difficult in Belarus. So if you want to sell a coursebook in both Portugal and Belarus, you have to make sure that the topics are not going to prove overly contentious or possibly lead to the arrest and deportation of the teacher and closing of the school. The result though, is what Mario Rinvolucri described as ““the soft, fudgey, sub-journalistic, woman’s magaziney world of EFLese course materials” - endless worthy discussions about the environment, the role of technology in life and how to have a healthy lifestyle. The Parsnips in ELT project is an attempt to provide resources and support for teachers who do want to engage their classes in more meaningful topics and discussions. Or at the very least to do something different! It is however, up to you and your own personal and professional judgment whether you choose to use these lesson plans in your context and with your classes, or even if you choose to read them at all! Inevitably, there will be some lessons that you will feel are inappropriate to use and some that you feel will really get the class engaged in the topic and the discussion

How does transformative innovation policy travel across physical and cognitive spaces? Exploring the role of mutable fluid space in experimental policy engagements

[EN] The growing call for public policy to begin addressing more robustly the challenges posed by sustainability transitions puts the onus on researchers to study how new meta-frameworks of transformative innovation policy and accompanying practices are implemented, applied, and received when they travel across different geographies. We discuss this question by tracing debates with reference to geography of sustainability transitions, policy mobility and actor network literatures. A methodological approach to analyse a cross-country policy initiative is developed and examined through three experiments of transformative innovation policy in diverse policy organisations with different missions and in contrasting geographical and professional spaces. The discussion highlights the relevance of building what we call mutable fluid spaces between academics and policy makers and its importance for transferring transformative innovation policy across geographical spaces.1This work was supported by the DSI/NRF/Newton Fund Trilateral Chair in Transformative Innovation, the 4IR and Sustainable Development (NRF Grant Number 118873), and the University of Sussex Business School.Ramirez, M.; Boni Aristizábal, A.; Wade, I.; Byrne, R. (2024). How does transformative innovation policy travel across physical and cognitive spaces? Exploring the role of mutable fluid space in experimental policy engagements. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions. 52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2024.1008815

KINEMATICS OF THE BMX SX GATE START ACTION

The purpose of this study was to identify the sagittal range of motion across five joints and two body segments during the first three cranks of the BMX SX gate start, and to identify difference between females and males across these seven variables. This was achieved with markerless motion capture of 10 athletes, analysing three maximum effort gate starts using a motion capture and data analysis method previously validated in literature. It was found that the average range of motion for the trunk segment was 39 ± 6°, head segment was 38 ± 35°, shoulder joint was 87 ± 7°, elbow joint was 47 ± 15°, hip joint was 62 ± 11°, knee joint was 93 ± 12° and ankle joint was 58 ± 14°. Further analysis showed a statistically significant difference between males and females. This information can be further used to advise strength and conditioning prescription and to assess movement maturatio

Getting started with soil health testing in Missouri

"Recent public initiatives and USDA programs are putting a focus on producers to improve the health of their soils. Soil health is defined by the USDA-NRCS as "the continued capacity of the soil to function as a vital, living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans." Soil health encompasses the biological, physical, and chemical aspects of soil function. Improving soil health will lead to a more sustainable agricultural system by protecting the soil resource while maintaining productivity and reducing environmental degradation. Current practices that producers can implement to improve their soil health include reduced tillage or no-till, cover crops, intercropping, manuring and more diverse crop rotations. Integration of livestock with cropping systems, such as grazing cover crops, can also boost soil health. Improving soil health may take time and will need to be monitored following appropriate sampling and testing protocols."--First page.Written by Stacy Zuber (formerly of the Division of Food Systems and Bioengineering), Kristen Veum (USDA Agricultural Research Service), Rob Myers (Center for Regenerative Agriculture), Newell Kitchen (USDA Agricultural Research Service), Donna Brandt (Soil Health Assessment Center), Steve Anderson (School of Natural Resources), Jordon Wade (School of Natural Resources)New 11/2021Includes bibliographical reference

Banner News

https://openspace.dmacc.edu/banner_news/1397/thumbnail.jp

Effect of a Perioperative, Cardiac Output-Guided Hemodynamic Therapy Algorithm on Outcomes Following Major Gastrointestinal Surgery A Randomized Clinical Trial and Systematic Review

Importance: small trials suggest that postoperative outcomes may be improved by the use of cardiac output monitoring to guide administration of intravenous fluid and inotropic drugs as part of a hemodynamic therapy algorithm.Objective: to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of a perioperative, cardiac output–guided hemodynamic therapy algorithm.Design, setting, and participants: OPTIMISE was a pragmatic, multicenter, randomized, observer-blinded trial of 734 high-risk patients aged 50 years or older undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery at 17 acute care hospitals in the United Kingdom. An updated systematic review and meta-analysis were also conducted including randomized trials published from 1966 to February 2014.Interventions: patients were randomly assigned to a cardiac output–guided hemodynamic therapy algorithm for intravenous fluid and inotrope (dopexamine) infusion during and 6 hours following surgery (n=368) or to usual care (n=366).Main outcomes and measures: the primary outcome was a composite of predefined 30-day moderate or major complications and mortality. Secondary outcomes were morbidity on day 7; infection, critical care–free days, and all-cause mortality at 30 days; all-cause mortality at 180 days; and length of hospital stay.Results: baseline patient characteristics, clinical care, and volumes of intravenous fluid were similar between groups. Care was nonadherent to the allocated treatment for less than 10% of patients in each group. The primary outcome occurred in 36.6% of intervention and 43.4% of usual care participants (relative risk [RR], 0.84 [95% CI, 0.71-1.01]; absolute risk reduction, 6.8% [95% CI, ?0.3% to 13.9%]; P?=?.07). There was no significant difference between groups for any secondary outcomes. Five intervention patients (1.4%) experienced cardiovascular serious adverse events within 24 hours compared with none in the usual care group. Findings of the meta-analysis of 38 trials, including data from this study, suggest that the intervention is associated with fewer complications (intervention, 488/1548 [31.5%] vs control, 614/1476 [41.6%]; RR, 0.77 [95% CI, 0.71-0.83]) and a nonsignificant reduction in hospital, 28-day, or 30-day mortality (intervention, 159/3215 deaths [4.9%] vs control, 206/3160 deaths [6.5%]; RR, 0.82 [95% CI, 0.67-1.01]) and mortality at longest follow-up (intervention, 267/3215 deaths [8.3%] vs control, 327/3160 deaths [10.3%]; RR, 0.86 [95% CI, 0.74-1.00]).Conclusions and relevance: in a randomized trial of high-risk patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery, use of a cardiac output–guided hemodynamic therapy algorithm compared with usual care did not reduce a composite outcome of complications and 30-day mortality. However, inclusion of these data in an updated meta-analysis indicates that the intervention was associated with a reduction in complication rate

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Reconstruction of primary vertices at the ATLAS experiment in Run 1 proton–proton collisions at the LHC

This paper presents the method and performance of primary vertex reconstruction in proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment during Run 1 of the LHC. The studies presented focus on data taken during 2012 at a centre-of-mass energy of √s=8 TeV. The performance has been measured as a function of the number of interactions per bunch crossing over a wide range, from one to seventy. The measurement of the position and size of the luminous region and its use as a constraint to improve the primary vertex resolution are discussed. A longitudinal vertex position resolution of about 30μm is achieved for events with high multiplicity of reconstructed tracks. The transverse position resolution is better than 20μm and is dominated by the precision on the size of the luminous region. An analytical model is proposed to describe the primary vertex reconstruction efficiency as a function of the number of interactions per bunch crossing and of the longitudinal size of the luminous region. Agreement between the data and the predictions of this model is better than 3% up to seventy interactions per bunch crossing

A genome-wide association study of anorexia nervosa

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a complex and heritable eating disorder characterized by dangerously low body weight. Neither candidate gene studies nor an initial genome wide association study (GWAS) have yielded significant and replicated results. We performed a GWAS in 2,907 cases with AN from 14 countries (15 sites) and 14,860 ancestrally matched controls as part of the Genetic Consortium for AN (GCAN) and the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium 3 (WTCCC3). Individual association analyses were conducted in each stratum and meta-analyzed across all 15 discovery datasets. Seventy-six (72 independent) SNPs were taken forward for in silico (two datasets) or de novo (13 datasets) replication genotyping in 2,677 independent AN cases and 8,629 European ancestry controls along with 458 AN cases and 421 controls from Japan. The final global meta-analysis across discovery and replication datasets comprised 5,551 AN cases and 21,080 controls. AN subtype analyses (1,606 AN restricting; 1,445 AN binge-purge) were performed. No findings reached genome-wide significance. Two intronic variants were suggestively associated: rs9839776 (P=3.01×10−7) in SOX2OT and rs17030795 (P=5.84×10−6) in PPP3CA. Two additional signals were specific to Europeans: rs1523921 (P=5.76×10−6) between CUL3 and FAM124B and rs1886797 (P=8.05×10−6) near SPATA13. Comparing discovery to replication results, 76% of the effects were in the same direction, an observation highly unlikely to be due to chance (P= 4×10−6), strongly suggesting that true findings exist but that our sample, the largest yet reported, was underpowered for their detection. The accrual of large genotyped AN case-control samples should be an immediate priority for the field