Critical teacher thinking and imaginations: Uncovering two vocabulary strategies to increase comprehension

Dedicated teachers who were taking a university course for reading assessment and diagnosis candidly discussed students\u27 problems with vocabulary words that impede successful reading comprehension. Their viewpoints about ways to help students learn to use vocabulary strategies effectively led to the development of two vocabulary strategies that were based on cognitive and personality styles. The interactive process of developing the strategies pushed the teachers\u27 imaginations and created a challenge for the teachers and their college professor

Jokes and the Linguistic Mind

It is often said that understanding humor in a language is the highest sign of fluency. Comprehending de dicto jokes, specifically, demonstrates our tacit knowledge of and competence in that language. In Aarons’s Jokes and the Linguistic Mind, multitudinous examples of humor are examined in regard to the wide range of linguistic concepts they address. The text is based on Chomsky’s (1965) definition of competence as our implicit knowledge of the rules of language; it aims to show that when, for example, a joke about the ambiguity of a certain article is funny, it is precisely because it brings a rule governing article use to our consciousness. Aarons’ detailed analyses of jokes play on semantic, phonologic, pragmatic, and syntactic rules, and are therefore of interest to the linguist. At the same time, her analyses are of equal importance to the language teacher, considering that many of these rules and explanations are of pedagogical use

Language Planning and Policy in Latin America: Ecuador, Mexico, and Paraguay

The latest volume in the Language Planning and Policy series, co-edited by Baldauf and Kaplan, deals with three Latin American countries, Ecuador, Mexico, and Paraguay, which, while not geographically close, do share several key factors in relation to their language situation and corresponding governmental policy. Previous books in this series on Africa, Asia, and Europe have dealt with similar issues of linguistic diversity and political context, yet the study of these Latin American countries offers the unique and distinguishing characteristic of one official language impacting three separate countries. The objective of these studies, and in fact the series, is to address roughly two-dozen questions that bring to light the nature of language in these countries. The editors organize the questions into four sections: language profile, language spread, language policy and planning, and language maintenance and prospects. The first section, language profile, includes not only general information on the languages, but also tables with the number of speakers as well as speaker distribution maps. Language spread, the second section, includes information on education, the role of media, and the role of immigration. The next section, language policy and planning, focuses on the topic with special attention paid to the historical background. Finally, the language maintenance and prospects section is designed to summarize the transmission of these languages and their probable future direction

Keeping students safe: Student perceptions of campus safety at a mid-sized Virginia university and the impact for prevention, response and risk reduction strategies

The nexus of social factors, the college experience, and campus safety research represents an empirical gap in the literature surrounding campus safety issues. There is a need for new and creative outlooks on how to approach this culturally sensitive and complex issue(s); a need this research will begin to fulfill. This study intends to ascertain themes regarding the socially constructed reality of campus safety perceptions and concerns, of both male and female students, at a mid-sized Virginia university. A mixed methods procedure was used which included a focus group interview as well as a survey. As Kelly and Torres (2006) wrote, “The perception, just as much as the actual experience was what shaped women students fear for their campus safety” (p. 28), thus it will be the perceptions of the students that will shape their concerns of campus safety. This study will utilize unmatched count technique as the quantitative data collection method and a social constructivist framework to adapt to the sensitive and personal nature of campus safety issues, including sexual assault and interpersonal violence. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data allowed the researcher to determine that students’ perceptions could be categorized and defined in a number of ways. There is a clear need for further research on the subject in order to implement culturally appropriate and effective prevention, response and risk reduction strategies

Avoiding Pitfalls in Mammographic Interpretation

AbstractThere is a public misconception that screening mammography detects all breast malignancies. The objective of this pictorial essay is to review classic mammographic features of malignancy that, if missed, could potentially result in malpractice litigation. By identifying radiologic themes, we attempt to improve awareness about the imaging characteristics of a variety of subtle malignancies

In silico analysis of sequenced strains of Clostridium difficile reveals a related set of conjugative transposons carrying a variety of accessory genes

The human gut pathogen Clostridium difficile contains many conjugative transposons that have an array of accessory genes. In the current study, recently sequenced genomes were analyzed to identify new putative conjugative transposons. Eleven new elements in 5 C. difficile strains were identified and all had a similar structure to the previously described elements CTn1, CTn5 and CTn7 in C. difficile strain 630. Each element identified did however contain a new set of accessory genes compared with those previously reported; including those predicted to encode ABC transporters, a toxin/antitoxin system and multiple antibiotic resistance genes