The Impact of a SIG on Assessment Literacy

A major aim of professional associations is to provide opportunities for professionals to interact with others, share ideas and develop in their chosen profession. Professional associations exist to provide specialized networking and development opportunities to a specific profession, group of individuals or field of study. To promote and support specialized research and communication, smaller subgroups within an association are often chartered or developed. These subgroups are typically known as Special Interest Groups. According to Jacob et al. (2013), association members join SIGs because they want to go deeper into a specialized content area and they enjoy networking with others who ‘speak the same language.’ The TESOL Arabia Testing, Assessment and Evaluation SIG (TAE SIG) has focused their professional development activities on an important trend in the field, that of language assessment literacy (LAL). Language assessment literacy has been a critical topic in English language teaching since the late 1990s. Unfortunately, this is mainly due to the fact that so many English language teachers are not assessment literate. In other words, many English language teachers lack the knowledge and skills to write effective language tests, evaluate the effectiveness of their tests, and use their test results in meaningful ways. The purpose of this chapter is to critically examine the status of LAL in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and report on activities that the TAE SIG has implemented to increase LAL

Photon-induced Nucleosynthesis: Current Problems and Experimental Approaches

Photon-induced reactions play a key role in the nucleosynthesis of rare neutron-deficient p-nuclei. The paper focuses on (gamma,alpha), (gamma,p), and (gamma,n) reactions which define the corresponding p-process path. The relation between stellar reaction rates and laboratory cross sections is analyzed for photon-induced reactions and their inverse capture reactions to evaluate various experimental approaches. An improved version S_C(E) of the astrophysical S-factor is suggested which is based on the Coulomb wave functions. S_C(E) avoids the apparent energy dependence which is otherwise obtained for capture reactions on heavy nuclei. It is found that a special type of synchrotron radiation available at SPring-8 that mimics stellar blackbody radiation at billions of Kelvin is a promising tool for future experiments. By using the blackbody synchrotron radiation, sufficient event rates for (gamma,alpha) and (gamma,p) reactions in the p-process path can be expected. These experiments will provide data to improve the nuclear parameters involved in the statistical model and thus reduce the uncertainties of nucleosynthesis calculations.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, EPJA, accepte

Performance of the mini nutritional assessment score in the detection of vitamin D status in an elderly Greek population

The primary aim of the study was to explore the potential relationship between serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels and Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) score, a surrogate for protein energy undernutrition, in elderly (65 years old) subjects with and without a hip fracture. A secondary aim of the study was to provide estimates of the MNA discriminatory performance in the detection of subjects with low levels of 25(OH)D (<20ng/ml). The study population consisted of 101 patients with a hip fracture, recruited from a single urban Hospital in Athens, Greece, and 85 community dwelling subjects with no history of hip fracture. Serum 25(OH)D was measured, nutritional status was determined by the MNA questionnaire in all subjects, and linear correlation between variables was investigated. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed and discriminatory performance was further assessed by calculating positive and negative likelihood ratios (LR). MNA scores were significantly correlated with 25(OH)D levels (rho=0.685, p<0.001) and this finding was robust in both groups and unaffected by gender. ROC curve analysis demonstrated an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.860 [standard error (SE): 0.026, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.810-0.910], which provided a significantly better estimation of 25(OH)D status than simple guess (p<0.001). The lowest cutoff value in MNA score, providing a sensitivity over 90% was 25.25, which was associated with a sensitivity of 90.9% and a specificity of 53.6%. The same analysis revealed acceptable results only within hip fracture patients. MNA score might be a satisfactory surrogate marker for 25(OH)D levels with which it is linearly correlated. However, it appears that its discriminatory performance, as a diagnostic tool for 25(OH)D insufficiency, is rather suboptimal. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart - New York

Cross section measurements of the Y89(p,γ)Zr90 reaction at energies relevant to p-process nucleosynthesis

In beam angle-integrated cross section measurements of the 89Y(p, γ)90Zr reaction were carried out at E p = 1.7-4.8 MeV by using a 4π NaI(Tl) summing detector. The resulting cross sections were used to derive astrophysical 5 factors as well as reaction rates. Cross sections, S factors and reaction rates have also been calculated by means of the statistical model code MOST. A good agreement between theoretical predictions and experimental data was found.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Cross section measurements of the Nb-93(p,gamma)Mo-94 reaction at E-p=1.4-4.9 MeV relevant to the nucleosynthetic p process

In-beam cross section measurements of the Nb-93(p,gamma)Mo-94 reaction have been carried out at E-p = 1.4-4.9 MeV, by using high efficiency high-purity Ge detectors, partly with BGO shields for Compton background suppression. From the resulting cross sections, which lie in the 0.5-300 mub range, astrophysical S factors as well as reaction rates have been obtained. By means of the statistical compound nucleus theory of Hauser and Feshbach, cross sections and reactions rates have also been calculated. A good agreement between the experimental data and the theoretical predictions has been found

Cross-section measurment of 93Nb(p,gamma) 94Mo in the range 1.4-4 MeV

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Cross-section measurments of (p,gamma)-reactions relevant to p-process

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