Reading Recovery: A Viable Prevention of Learning Disability

Mrs. Wishy Washy, one of the most popular charac ters of the little books used in Reading Recovery, sets a Herculean task for herself — to keep the barnyard ani mals clean. Professor Lyons, too, has taken on a big job — to convince the educational establishment that there must be a better way to cope with the increasing number of children classified as learning disabled. Suggesting that Reading Recovery can be that first net for avoiding the mislabeling of young children as at-risk learners, she provides a detailed case study of Mike, once labeled LD. The detailed description of his LD instruction and her specially tailored Reading Recovery program provide the reader with a startling contrast. In addition it provides insights into why the Reading Recovery concept is so powerful. Her recommendations for dealing with the LD crisis must be heard

Studies on the distribution and properties of microtubular proteins in nervous tissue

The work reported in this thesis concerns investigation of the subcellular distribution of colchicine-binding activity (of presumed microtubular origin) in mammalian brain, and studies on the bio-chemical properties of colchicine-binding protein ('tubulin'). The results led to the following conclusions: About half the CB-activity present in sucrose-containing buffered homogenates of brain was consistently recovered in the particulate fraction obtained after high-speed centrifugation, and further investigations showed that CB-activity was widely distributed amongst the various subfractions obtained after gradient centrifugation of this pelleted material. The majority of the recovered particulate CB-activity was found to be associated with the fractions rich in synaptic membranes. Tubulin from this source appeared to represent a 'stabilised' form of CB-protein compared to that obtained from the high-speed soluble fraction, as judged from the results of experiments in which CB-activity was subjected to thermal decay under a variety of conditions. In addition, it was also shown that the tubulin isolated in particulate preparations was very tightly bound to membrane material, since it could not be readily solubilised by treatment with the detergent Triton X-100 or by sonication. It was found, using partly purified tubulin preparations, that tubulin could act as a substrate for a cAMP-stimulated protein kinase that was closely associated with the protein, and that it bound cAMP. In addition, the antimitotic agent vincristine, which was found to stimulate CB-activity, also showed the remarkable property of almost selectively precipitating CB-protein from soluble extracts of brain, in the cold. Finally, the previously inferred relation between neurotubular protein and CB-protein was proved when attempts made at isolating intact micro-tubules from brain homogenates prepared in various stabilising media were successful, and it was shown that these preparations were enriched in CB-activity.<p

Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery is an early, short-term intervention literacy program. It helps the lowest achieving first grade children develop effective and efficient problem solving processes and strategies used by successful children in the classroom. The goal of the program is to bring those children who are having most difficulty developing literacy skills to a level of achievement at or beyond their peers. This way, they can participate in and benefit from regular classroom literacy instruction

The role of alcohol in constructing gender &amp; class identities among young women in the age of social media

Research suggests young women view drinking as a pleasurable aspect of their social lives but that they face challenges in engaging in a traditionally ‘masculine’ behaviour whilst maintaining a desirable ‘femininity’. Social network sites such as Facebook make socialising visible to a wide audience. This paper explores how young people discuss young women’s drinking practices, and how young women construct their identities through alcohol consumption and its display on social media. We conducted 21 friendship-based focus groups (both mixed and single sex) with young adults aged 18–29 years and 13 individual interviews with a subset of focus group respondents centred on their Facebook practices. We recruited a purposive sample in Glasgow, Scotland (UK) which included ‘middle class’ (defined as students and those in professional jobs) and ‘working class’ respondents (employed in manual/service sector jobs), who participated in a range of venues in the night time economy. Young women’s discussions revealed a difficult ‘balancing act’ between demonstrating an ‘up for it’ sexy (but not too sexy) femininity through their drinking and appearance, while still retaining control and respectability. This ‘balancing act’ was particularly precarious for working class women, who appeared to be judged more harshly than middle class women both online and offline. While a gendered double standard around appearance and alcohol consumption is not new, a wider online audience can now observe and comment on how women look and behave. Social structures such as gender and social class remain central to the construction of identity both online and offline

Constant-Time Communication for Information Retrieval Systems

The construction of write-ahead logging is a robust grand challenge. In fact, few biologists would disagree with the synthesis of RPCs, demonstrates the intuitive importance of steganography. In our research we show not only that the foremost virtual algorithm for the de- velopment of Scheme is in Co-NP, but that the same is true for suffix trees

Transformation and time-out: the role of alcohol in identity construction among Scottish women in early midlife

Despite the increase in drinking by women in early midlife, little alcohol research has focused on this group. We explore how alcohol is associated with the construction of gender identities among women aged 30 to 50 years in the west of Scotland, United Kingdom. We draw on qualitative data from 11 focus groups (five all-female, six mixed-sex) with pre-existing groups of friends and work colleagues in which women and men discuss their drinking behaviours. Analysis demonstrated how alcohol represented a time and space away from paid and unpaid work for women in a range of domestic circumstances, allowing them to relax and unwind. While women used alcohol to construct a range of identities, traditional notions of femininity remained salient (e.g. attention to appearance, drinking ‘girly’ drinks). Drinking enabled women to assert their identity beyond the roles and responsibilities often associated with being a woman in early midlife. For example, some respondents with young children described the transformative effects of excessive drinking which allowed them to return temporarily to a younger, carefree version of themselves. Thus, our data suggest that women's drinking in early midlife revolves around notions of ‘idealised’ femininity but simultaneously represents a way of achieving ‘time out’ from traditional female responsibilities such as caring for others. We consider these findings within a broader social and cultural context including alcohol marketing, domestic roles and motherhood and their implications for health promotion

Staying 'in the zone' but not passing the 'point of no return': Embodiment, gender and drinking in mid-life

Public health approaches have frequently conceptualised alcohol consumption as an individual behaviour resulting from rational choice. We argue that drinking alcohol needs to be understood as an embodied social practice embedded in gendered social relationships and environments. We draw on data from 14 focus groups with pre-existing groups of friends and work colleagues in which men and women in mid-life discussed their drinking behaviour. Analysis demonstrated that drinking alcohol marked a transitory time and space that altered both women's and men's subjective embodied experience of everyday gendered roles and responsibilities. The participants positioned themselves as experienced drinkers who, through accumulated knowledge of their own physical bodies, could achieve enjoyable bodily sensations by reaching a desired level of intoxication (being in the zone). These mid-life adults, particularly women, discussed knowing when they were approaching their limit and needed to stop drinking. Experiential and gendered embodied knowledge was more important in regulating consumption than health promotion advice. These findings foreground the relational and gendered nature of drinking and reinforce the need to critically interrogate the concept of alcohol consumption as a simple health behaviour. Broader theorising around notions of gendered embodiment may be helpful for more sophisticated conceptualisations of health practices

Genetic and environmental influences on sleep quality in middle‐aged men: a twin study

Poor sleep quality is a risk factor for a number of cognitive and physiological age-related disorders. Identifying factors underlying sleep quality are important in understanding the etiology of these age-related health disorders. We investigated the extent to which genes and the environment contribute to subjective sleep quality in middle-aged male twins using the classical twin design. We used the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index to measure sleep quality in 1218 middle-aged twin men from the Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging (mean age = 55.4 years; range 51-60; 339 monozygotic twin pairs, 257 dizygotic twin pairs, 26 unpaired twins). The mean PSQI global score was 5.6 [SD = 3.6; range 0-20]. Based on univariate twin models, 34% of variability in the global PSQI score was due to additive genetic effects (heritability) and 66% was attributed to individual-specific environmental factors. Common environment did not contribute to the variability. Similarly, the heritability of poor sleep-a dichotomous measure based on the cut-off of global PSQI>5-was 31%, with no contribution of the common environment. Heritability of six of the seven PSQI component scores (subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, habitual sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, and daytime dysfunction) ranged from 0.15 to 0.31, whereas no genetic influences contributed to the use of sleeping medication. Additive genetic influences contribute to approximately one-third of the variability of global subjective sleep quality. Our results in middle-aged men constitute a first step towards examination of the genetic relationship between sleep and other facets of aging.Accepted manuscrip

Underdiagnosis of mild cognitive impairment: A consequence of ignoring practice effects

INTRODUCTION: Longitudinal testing is necessary to accurately measure cognitive change. However, repeated testing is susceptible to practice effects, which may obscure true cognitive decline and delay detection of mild cognitive impairment (MCI). METHODS: We retested 995 late-middle-aged men in a ∼6-year follow-up of the Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging. In addition, 170 age-matched replacements were tested for the first time at study wave 2. Group differences were used to calculate practice effects after controlling for attrition effects. MCI diagnoses were generated from practice-adjusted scores. RESULTS: There were significant practice effects on most cognitive domains. Conversion to MCI doubled after correcting for practice effects, from 4.5% to 9%. Importantly, practice effects were present although there were declines in uncorrected scores. DISCUSSION: Accounting for practice effects is critical to early detection of MCI. Declines, when lower than expected, can still indicate practice effects. Replacement participants are needed for accurately assessing disease progression.Published versio