"You Can't Get to Comprehension Until They Trust You": Teachers' Thinking About Practices That Foster Students' Meaning-Making of Literature

Often in classrooms meaning-making skills are not acknowledged and therefore not fostered. In addition, there are many high school ELA classrooms that prioritize students’ reaching one correct answer, or one best interpretation of literature. Yet, some ELA teachers do engage their students in rich meaning-making processes, and do not privilege one answer or interpretation of a piece of literature. Learning how and why do they do this will shed light on how teachers can be supported in bringing their practice in line with research findings on adolescents’ meaning-making processes as they interact with works of literature in ELA classrooms. In addition, it may reveal effective practices not yet studied, and avenues for future research, given the current state of the theoretical and empirical literature. Consequently, the questions guiding this study are as follows: How do these four ELA teachers in my study work to foster student meaning-making by shaping the classroom contexts, texts, readers, and activities? Specifically, what do these teachers think about and what do they do when they are working to foster student meaning making? This study examines the practices of four teachers through classroom observations, interviews with teachers, and the collection of classroom handouts. The data collected through these means was then analyzed through constant comparative analysis. Each of these four teachers, in an effort to foster student meaning making, crafted environments, engendered relationships with students and between students and texts, chose and organized texts, employed instructional strategies, and modeled engagement. However, each of these teachers performed these activities differently based on how they were thinking about their work. If meaning making is to become a clear goal in high school English Language Arts classrooms, further study on meaning making, the role of intellectual risk taking in meaning making, the role of student teacher relationships in meaning making, the role of the classroom environment and meaning making, and the connection between standardized testing and meaning making is required.PHDEducational StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162869/1/nickmu_1.pd

The impact of review valence and awareness of deceptive practices on consumers’ responses to online product ratings and reviews

Many online retailers and some manufacturers/service providers have recently been engaging in questionable practices, where product reviews are often fabricated and/or posted without sufficient clarity and objectivity. Across an exploratory study and two main studies, we empirically examine this phenomenon and observe a pattern of effects that suggests that review valence (i.e., the average number of rating-stars a product receives) influences product attitudes and intentions, but that these outcomes are significantly impacted by the extent to which consumers are aware of potentially deceptive online review practices. Awareness of deceptive practices was found to differentially influence attitudes and intentions, depending upon whether the star-ratings were perfect (5/5 stars), highly positive (4.9/5 stars), or generally positive (4.5/5 or 4.7/5 stars). Participants’ perceptions of the e-retailer’s manipulative intent were also shown to mediate these effects, with higher perceptions of perceived manipulative intent yielding less favorable product attitudes and reduced purchase intentions

Technical and clinical success after endovascular therapy for chronic type B aortic dissections

ObjectiveTo analyze early technical success and late clinical success after endovascular entry sealing for chronic type B dissection with special emphasis on reintervention, false lumen thrombosis, and aortic remodeling.MethodsRetrospective analysis of a prospective database. From September 1999 to January 2011, 19 patients with chronic type B dissections were treated by endovascular entry sealing. Median age was 60 years. Median time between onset of acute dissection and surgical intervention was 36 (1 to 60) months. Median follow-up was 13 months (1 to 124).ResultsThe endografts used were: Medtronic Captivia (5), Medtronic Valiant (5), Gore TAG (6), Gore C-TAG (2), and Cook Zenith (1). In four patients, revascularization of the left subclavian artery was performed prior to entry sealing. Primary technical success rate (entry sealing, absence of type I leak) was 18/19 (94.7%). In-hospital mortality was 0%. Spinal cord injury with persistent paraplegia occurred in 1/19 (5.2%) patients. After a maximal follow-up of 124 months, reinterventions in 9/19 (47.3%) were necessary: distal/proximal extension of stent graft (8), replacement of the aortic arch due to retrograde dissection (1), and open infrarenal aneurysm repair (1). During follow-up, none of the patients died due to stent-related complications.ConclusionEndovascular treatment (EVT) in chronic type B dissections has a high technical success rate and low mortality/morbidity. However reintervention rates are not negligible which might reduce the clinical success of EVT. Future investigations should aim at identifying patients who benefit from EVT at better defining the timing of EVT and at determining if entry sealing alone is sufficient

Residual pulmonary vasodilative reserve predicts outcome in idiopathic pulmonary hypertension

Objective: Idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH) remains a devastating and incurable, albeit treatable condition. Treatment response is not uniform and parameters that help to anticipate a rather benign or a malignant course of the disease are warranted. Acute pulmonary vasoreactivity testing during right heart catheterisation is recommended to identify a minority of patients with IPAH with sustained response to calcium channel blocker therapy. This study aimed to evaluate the prognostic significance of a residual pulmonary vasodilative reserve in patients with IPAH not meeting current vasoresponder criteria. Design: Observational right heart catheter study in 66 (n=66) patients with IPAH not meeting current vasoresponse criteria. Pulmonary vasodilative reserve was assessed by inhalation of 5 µg iloprost-aerosol. Results: Sixty-six (n=66) of 72 (n=72) patients with IPAH did not meet current definition criteria assessed during vasodilator testing to assess pulmonary vasodilatory reserve. In those, iloprost-aerosol caused a reduction of mean pulmonary artery pressure (Δ pulmonary artery pressure—11.4%; p<0.001) and increased cardiac output (Δ cardiac output +16.7%; p<0.001), resulting in a reduction of pulmonary vascular resistance (Δ pulmonary vascular resistance—25%; p<0.001). The magnitude of this response was pronounced in surviving patients. A pulmonary vascular resistance reduction of ≥30% turned out to predict outcome in patients with IPAH. Conclusions: Residual pulmonary vasodilative reserve during acute vasodilator testing is of prognostic relevance in patients with IPAH not meeting current definitions of acute vasoreactivity. Therefore vasoreactivity testing holds more information than currently used

Residual pulmonary vasodilative reserve predicts outcome in idiopathic pulmonary hypertension

Objective: Idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH) remains a devastating and incurable, albeit treatable condition. Treatment response is not uniform and parameters that help to anticipate a rather benign or a malignant course of the disease are warranted. Acute pulmonary vasoreactivity testing during right heart catheterisation is recommended to identify a minority of patients with IPAH with sustained response to calcium channel blocker therapy. This study aimed to evaluate the prognostic significance of a residual pulmonary vasodilative reserve in patients with IPAH not meeting current vasoresponder criteria. Design: Observational right heart catheter study in 66 (n=66) patients with IPAH not meeting current vasoresponse criteria. Pulmonary vasodilative reserve was assessed by inhalation of 5 µg iloprost-aerosol. Results: Sixty-six (n=66) of 72 (n=72) patients with IPAH did not meet current definition criteria assessed during vasodilator testing to assess pulmonary vasodilatory reserve. In those, iloprost-aerosol caused a reduction of mean pulmonary artery pressure (Δ pulmonary artery pressure—11.4%; p<0.001) and increased cardiac output (Δ cardiac output +16.7%; p<0.001), resulting in a reduction of pulmonary vascular resistance (Δ pulmonary vascular resistance—25%; p<0.001). The magnitude of this response was pronounced in surviving patients. A pulmonary vascular resistance reduction of ≥30% turned out to predict outcome in patients with IPAH. Conclusions: Residual pulmonary vasodilative reserve during acute vasodilator testing is of prognostic relevance in patients with IPAH not meeting current definitions of acute vasoreactivity. Therefore vasoreactivity testing holds more information than currently used

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Silencing of the sulfur rich alpha-gliadin storage protein family in wheat grains (Triticum aestivum L.) causes no unintended side-effects on other metabolites

Zoerb C, Becker D, Hasler M, et al. Silencing of the sulfur rich alpha-gliadin storage protein family in wheat grains (Triticum aestivum L.) causes no unintended side-effects on other metabolites. Frontiers in Plant Science. 2013;4:369.Wheat is an important source of proteins and metabolites for human and animal nutrition. To assess the nutritional quality of wheat products, various protein and diverse metabolites have to be evaluated. The grain storage protein family of the alpha-gliadins are suggested to be the primary initiator of the inflammatory response to gluten in Celiac disease patients. With the technique of RNAi, the alpha-gliadin storage protein fraction in wheat grains was recently knocked down. From a patient's perspective, this is a desired approach, however, this study aims to evaluate whether such a down-regulation of these problematic alpha-gliadins also has unintended side-effects on other plant metabolites. Such uncontrolled and unknown arbitrary effects on any metabolite in plants designated for food production would surely represent an avoidable risk for the consumer. In general, alpha-gliadins are rich in sulfur, making their synthesis and content depended of the sulfur supply. For this reason, the influence of the application of increasing sulfur amounts on the metabolome of alpha-gliadin-deficient wheat was additionally investigated because it might be possible that e.g., considerable high/low amounts of S might increase or even induce such unintended effects that are not observable under moderate S nutrition. By silencing the alpha-gliadin genes, a recently developed wheat line that lacks the set of 75 corresponding alpha-gliadin proteins has become available. The plants were subsequently tested for RNAi-induced effects on metabolites that were not directly attributable to the specific effects of the RNAi-approach on the alpha-gliadin proteins. For this, GC-MS-based metabolite profiles were recorded. A comparison of wild type with gliadin-deficient plants cultivated in pot experiments revealed no differences in all 109 analyzed metabolites, regardless of the S-nutritional status. No unintended effects attributable to the RNAi-based specific genetic deletion of a storage protein fraction were observed