Canadian Children’s Literature: An Alberta Survey

This article presents the findings of an online survey administered to Alberta elementary school teachers in 2000-2001. The survey explored the teachers’ knowledge and use of Canadian children’s literature and their thoughts about the role of Canadian literature in elementary school classrooms. Canadian children’s trade books espouse particular images and values that assist young Canadians in developing a sense of their national and personal identities. Respondents expressed their thoughts about the advantages and disadvantages of using Canadian literature. Overall, most teachers appeared to be unfamiliar with contemporary Canadian books and included Canadian materials in their classroom instruction only for specific Canadian content.Cet article présente les résultats d’une enquête en ligne effectuée auprès d’enseignants à l’élémentaire en Alberta, en 2000-2001. L’enquête portait sur les connaissances des enseignants au sujet de la littérature canadienne pour jeunes, l’usage qu’ils en faisaient et leurs avis sur le rôle de la littérature canadienne à l’élémentaire. Les ouvrages canadiens d’intérêt général publiés pour les jeunes transmettent des images et des valeurs qui aident les jeunes Canadiens à se développer une identité nationale et personnelle. Les répondants se sont exprimés sur les bienfaits et les désavantages d’employer la littérature canadienne. De façon générale, la majorité des enseignants semblent ne pas bien connaître les livres canadiens contemporains et n’avaient recours à la littérature canadienne que pour son contenu spécifiquement canadien

Secondary uses of clinical data in primary care

This paper, presented as a panel at the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Fall Symposium 2006, explores a number of secondary uses of primary care clinical data derived from point-of care systems, and the issues arising from those uses. The authors (from the USA and the UK) describe, compare and contrast some secondary uses: pay-for-performance, public disclosure, clinical audit, health resource planning, and clinical system usage; in various environments: national health system, network of small family practice offices, and university teaching centres. In the UK, such data are now being used in pay-for-performance for GPs, and approximately 35% of their salary has been put at risk, which has resulted in close scrutiny. In the USA, pay-for-performance is at an earlier stage but is increasingly prevalent and continues to be hotly debated. Some of the issues that arise from these uses of clinical data _data quality including accuracy, comparability, perverse incentives, effect of secondary uses on care provision, and security and confidentiality among others _were discussed. Finally, options and opportunities for improving secondary uses of data in the light of the issues covered earlier were considered

Open source and international health informatics: placebo or panacea?

The authors explore the history of open source software and how the future of this paradigm can affect global changes to healthcare informatics. They identify four key requirements: 1 to establish an international health informatics open source (IHI-OS) community 2 to develop a kernel that is broad enough but also provides sufficient detail to be usable across international boundaries and across medical disciplines 3 to develop a business case for international health informatics open source 4 to develop international standards

Identifying and establishing consensus on the most important safety features of GP computer systems: e-Delphi study

Our objective was to identify and establish consensus on the most important safety features of GP computer systems, with a particular emphasis on medicines management.Weused a two-round electronic Delphi survey, completed by a 21-member multidisciplinary expert panel, all from the UK. The main outcome measure was percentage agreement of the panel members on the importance of the presence of a number of different safety features (presented as clinical statements) onGP computer systems.We found 90% or greater agreement on the importance of 32 (58%) statements. These statements, indicating issues considered to be of considerable importance (rated as important or very important), related to: computerised alerts; the need to avoid spurious alerts; making it difficult to override critical alerts; having audit trails of such overrides; support for safe repeat prescribing; effective computer_user interface; importance of call and recall management; and the need to be able to run safety reports. The high level of agreement among the expert panel members indicates clear themes and priorities that need to be addressed in any further improvement of safety features in primary care computing systems

Detection and forecasting of shallow landslides: lessons from a natural laboratory

Shallow-rapid landslides are a significant hillslope erosion mechanism and limited understanding of their initiation and development results in persistent risk to infrastructure. Here, we analyse the slope above the strategic A83 Rest and be Thankful road in the west of Scotland. An inventory of 70 landslides (2003-2020) shows three types of shallow landslide, debris flows, creep deformation and debris falls. Debris flows dominate and account for 5,350m3 (98 ) of shallow-landslide source volume across the site. We use novel time-lapse vector tracking to detect and quantify slope instabilities, whilst seismometers demonstrate the potential for live detection and location of debris flows. Using on-slope rainfall data, we show that shallow-landslides are typically triggered by abrupt changes in the rainfall trend, characterised by high-intensity, long duration rainstorms, sometimes part of larger seasonal rainfall changes. We derive empirical antecedent precipitation (>62mm) and intensity-duration (>10 hours) thresholds over which shallow-landslides occur. Analysis shows the new thresholds are more effective at raising hazard alerts than the current management plan.The low-cost sensors provide vital notification of increasing hazard, the initiation of movement, and final failure. This approach offers considerable advances to support operational decision-making for infrastructure threatened by complex slope hazards

A Frameshift Mutation in Golden Retriever Dogs with Progressive Retinal Atrophy Endorses SLC4A3 as a Candidate Gene for Human Retinal Degenerations

Progressive retinal atrophy (PRA) in dogs, the canine equivalent of retinitis pigmentosa (RP) in humans, is characterised by vision loss due to degeneration of the photoreceptor cells in the retina, eventually leading to complete blindness. It affects more than 100 dog breeds, and is caused by numerous mutations. RP affects 1 in 4000 people in the Western world and 70% of causal mutations remain unknown. Canine diseases are natural models for the study of human diseases and are becoming increasingly useful for the development of therapies in humans. One variant, prcd-PRA, only accounts for a small proportion of PRA cases in the Golden Retriever (GR) breed. Using genome-wide association with 27 cases and 19 controls we identified a novel PRA locus on CFA37 (praw = 1.94×10−10, pgenome = 1.0×10−5), where a 644 kb region was homozygous within cases. A frameshift mutation was identified in a solute carrier anion exchanger gene (SLC4A3) located within this region. This variant was present in 56% of PRA cases and 87% of obligate carriers, and displayed a recessive mode of inheritance with full penetrance within those lineages in which it segregated. Allele frequencies are approximately 4% in the UK, 6% in Sweden and 2% in France, but the variant has not been found in GRs from the US. A large proportion of cases (approximately 44%) remain unexplained, indicating that PRA in this breed is genetically heterogeneous and caused by at least three mutations. SLC4A3 is important for retinal function and has not previously been associated with spontaneously occurring retinal degenerations in any other species, including humans