Word Puzzles for Vocabulary Development

Most teachers say it\u27s easy to come up with two or three kinds of word puzzles for use with pupils, but it\u27s hard to find a wide variety. It\u27s handy, however, to be familiar with a number of different kinds, since word puzzles are useful for vocabulary development

Better Attitudes via Branched Stories

Jack reads adequately for a nine-year-old, but reading is not his thing. When he gets to the end of a basal-reader page, he\u27d rather quit than continue. So far, his reading materials just haven\u27t turned him on

Let\u27s Leave No Stone Unturned

What does a good remedial reading teacher do? Everything the teacher of a regular classroom does, only more in depth. Consider, for example, all that happens during a three-step lesson for a remedial reading group of nine-year-olds

Biographies in the Basals: Which People Are Featured?

Whenever educators choose selections for a series of basal reading textbooks, they include some biographies. But they always face a problem of priorities and space. There is only a little room in a basal series for biographical selections but there are many famous people who could be featured, so they have to decide which people get to occupy the limited biographical space

Vocabulary Scavenger Hunts: A Scheme for Schema Development

There\u27s only one difficulty that teachers express with providing objects and pictures of objects to help children develop general information and word meanings for a topic under study. This difficulty relates to the vast investment of time teachers must spend in rounding up these objects and pictures. Vocabulary scavenger hunts are ways of gathering objects and pictures related to a topic under study in which the students, NOT the teacher do the hunting and gathering

The Prognostic Significance of Multiple Station N2 in Patients with Surgically Resected Stage IIIA N2 Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

Mediastinal (N2) lymph node involvement is heterogenous with huge variation in the extent and grouped together under stage IIIA. However, they showed a different survival even in the same stage. We tried to determine the prognostic implication of the multiple station N2 lymph node metastasis in stage IIIA N2 non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The survival of stage IIIA N2 was analyzed according to the number of N2 station and their survival was compared with that of stage IIIB. In stage IIIA N2 NSCLC, multivariate analysis indicated that multiple station N2 was one of the independent prognostic factors for poor survival. The 5-yr survival of multiple station N2 IIIA (20.4%) was lower than that of single station N2 IIIA (33.8%) significantly (p=0.016). but when it was compared with that of stage IIIB (15.5%), there was no difference. Therefore, we suggest that multiple station N2 should be considered similar to stage IIIB disease with regard to predicting survival and accordingly should receive a new position in the TNM staging system

“That’s what makes me better”: Investigating children and adolescents’ experiences of pain communication with healthcare professionals in paediatric rheumatology

BackgroundPain communication should be an integral part of clinical consultations, particularly in paediatric rheumatology where children and adolescents frequently present with chronic musculoskeletal pain. To date, literature exploring the nature of and extent to which pain communication occurs has focused on healthcare professionals as respondents, yielding inconsistent and incomplete findings. The aim of this study was to explore children and adolescents’ experiences of pain communication in the context of paediatric rheumatology consultations. MethodsData were collected using semi-structured telephone interviews with children and adolescents recruited from three tertiary paediatric rheumatology centres in the UK. A framework analysis approach was used to explore the similarities and divergences in participant accounts. ResultsTwenty-six children and adolescents (aged 6-18 years, median=14, 58% female) participated. Diagnoses included: Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis, Chronic Idiopathic Pain Syndromes, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome/Hypermobility. Four themes were identified: 1) Co-ordination of pain communication; 2) Barriers to pain communication; 3) Facilitators of pain communication; 4) Dissatisfaction with pain communication. These themes particularly encompassed the process of communication, disclosure of effective and ineffective approaches and the impact of communication. Participants expected questions about pain, felt cared about and found talking about pain natural. Challenges included augmenting the feeling of being different to peers and concerns about management plans changing as a result of pain conversations. ConclusionsChildren and adolescents recalled a range of effective and ineffective pain communication approaches. Our study informs recommendations which highlight how paediatric healthcare professionals can improve their communication about pain with children and adolescents in the future. <br/

The Approach to Ergodicity in Monte Carlo Simulations

The approach to the ergodic limit in Monte Carlo simulations is studied using both analytic and numerical methods. With the help of a stochastic model, a metric is defined that enables the examination of a simulation in both the ergodic and non-ergodic regimes. In the non-ergodic regime, the model implies how the simulation is expected to approach ergodic behavior analytically, and the analytically inferred decay law of the metric allows the monitoring of the onset of ergodic behavior. The metric is related to previously defined measures developed for molecular dynamics simulations, and the metric enables the comparison of the relative efficiencies of different Monte Carlo schemes. Applications to Lennard-Jones 13-particle clusters are shown to match the model for Metropolis, J-walking and parallel tempering based approaches. The relative efficiencies of these three Monte Carlo approaches are compared, and the decay law is shown to be useful in determining needed high temperature parameters in parallel tempering and J-walking studies of atomic clusters.Comment: 17 Pages, 7 Figure

Estimating the minimum important difference in the DEMQOL instrument in people with dementia

Purpose The Dementia-Related Quality of Life (DEMQOL) measure and the DEMQOL-Utility Score (DEMQOL-U) are validated tools for measuring quality of life (QOL) in people with dementia. What score changes translate to a clinically significant impact on patients’ lives was unknown. This study establishes the minimal important differences (MID) for these two instruments. Methods Anchor-based and distribution-based methods were used to estimate the MID scores from patients enrolled in a randomised controlled trial. For the anchor-based method, the global QOL (Q29) item from the DEMQOL was chosen as the anchor for DEMQOL and both Q29 and EQ-5D for DEMQOL-U. A one category difference in Q29, and a 0.07 point difference in EQ-5D score, were used to classify improvement and deterioration, and the MID scores were calculated for each category. These results were compared with scores obtained by the distribution-based methods. Results A total of 490 people with dementia had baseline DEMQOL data, of these 386 had 8-month data, and 344 had 12-month DEMQOL data. The absolute change in DEMQOL for a combined 1-point increase or decrease in the Q29 anchor was 5.2 at 8 months and 6.0 at 12 months. For the DEMQOL-U, the average absolute change at 8 and 12 months was 0.032 and 0.046 for the Q29 anchor and 0.020 and 0.024 for EQ-5D anchor. Conclusion We present MID scores for the DEMQOL and DEMQOL-U instruments obtained from a large cohort of patients with dementia. An anchored-based estimate of the MID for the DEMQOL is around 5 to 6 points; and 0.02 to 0.05 points for the DEMQOL-U. The results of this study can guide clinicians and researchers in the interpretation of these instruments comparisons between groups or within groups of people with dementia. Trial Registration Number and date of registration: ISRCTN17993825 on 11th October 2016

Observations of storm-induced mixing and Gulf Stream Ring incursion over the southern flank of Georges Bank : winter and summer 1997

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2010. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 115 (2010): C08008, doi:10.1029/2009JC005706.High-resolution hydrographic measurements collected along the southern edge of Georges Bank during March and June–July 1997 focused on characterizing processes that drive fluxes of material between the slope and bank. Wintertime sampling characterized changes driven by a strong storm. A Scotian Shelf crossover event produced a ribbon of anomalously fresh water along the bank's southern flank that was diluted during the storm. Comparison of prestorm and poststorm sections shows that over the bank changes in heat and salt inventories are consistent with those expected solely from local surface fluxes. In deeper waters, advective effects, likely associated with frontal motion and eddies, are clearly important. Summertime surveys resolve the development of a massive intrusion of Gulf Stream-like waters onto the bank. East of the intrusion, a thin extrusion of bank water is drawn outward by the developing ring, exporting fresher water at a rate of about 7 × 104 m3/s. A large-amplitude Gulf Stream meander appears to initiate the extrusion, but it quickly evolves, near the bank edge, into a warm core ring. Ring water intrudes to approximately the 80 m isobath, 40 km inshore from the bank edge. The intrusion process seems analogous to the development of Gulf Stream shingles (a hydrodynamic instability) in the South Atlantic Bight. It appears that, once the intruded water is established on the bank, it remains there and dissipates in place. Although the intrusion is an extremely dramatic event, it is probably not actually a major contributor to shelf edge exchanges over a seasonal time scale.This work was supported by the National Science Foundation as part of the U.S. Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics (GLOBEC) program through grant OCE-9632349. Lee received additional support from OCE-0628379