An fMRI investigation of semantic and phonological naming treatment in aphasia

Di�culty naming objects is one of the most common impairments in people with aphasia post-stroke, irrespective of aphasia classification (Goodglass & Wingfield, 1997). Thus, remediation of naming impairments is often a focus of treatment in the rehabilitation of language. Such treatments typically employ phonological or semantic approaches, or a combination of the two, in order to target the major cognitive components involved in word retrieval (Nickels,2002). Although individuals can show greater benefit from one approach over the other, the relationship between an individual’s locus of breakdown in word retrieval and response to a particular treatment approach remains unclear, and knowledge of the underlying neural mechanisms which may be responsible for successful treatment is scarce. The aim of this study was to examine brain activity associated with successful phonological and semantic based treatments for word retrieval using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging fMRI).

Contributing to computing services to benchmarking asset management knowledge management

Asset management has broadened from a focus on maintenance management to whole of life cycle asset management requiring a suite of new competencies from asset procurement to management and disposal. Well developed skills and competencies as well as practical experience are a prerequisite to maintain capability, to manage demand as well to plan and set priorities and ensure on-going asset sustainability. This paper has as its focus to establish critical understandings of data, information and knowledge for asset management along with the way in which benchmarking these attributes through computer-aided design may aid a strategic approach to asset management. The paper provides suggestions to improve sharing, integration and creation of asset-related knowledge through the application of codification and personalization approaches.

The reach and rationale for community health fairs

Latinos living in the USA account for one third of the uninsured population and face numerous cultural, linguistic, and financial barriers to accessing healthcare services. Community health fairs have developed to address the unmet need for no- and low-cost services that target prevention and education among underserved communities. The current research describes an ongoing effort in a community in Southern California and examines the barriers to health care among participants registering to receive free breast health screenings, one of the major services offered at a 2010 health fair. A total of 186 adult Latina women completed a brief questionnaire assessing their healthcare utilization and self-reported barriers to engaging in preventive and screening services. Approximately two thirds of the participants reported never receiving or having more than 2 years passing since receiving a preventive health check-up. Participants identified cost (64.5 %) and knowledge of locations for services (52.3 %) as the primary barriers to engaging in routine healthcare services. Engaging with health professionals represents a leading way in which adults obtain health information; health fairs offering cancer health screenings represent a culturally appropriate venue for increased cancer health equity. Implications of the current research for future health fairs and their role in community cancer education are discussed.

Nursing care of children in general practice settings: roles and responsibilities

Aims. To examine roles and responsibilities of Practice Nurses in the area of child health and development and in advising parents about child health issues. Background. As the focus of Australia’s health care system shifts further towards the primary health care sector, governmental initiatives require that Practice Nurses are knowledgeable, confident and competent in providing care in the area of child health and development. Little is known about roles and responsibilities of Practice Nurses in this area. Design. Cross-sectional survey design. Methods. Practice Nurses completed a national online survey examining the roles and responsibilities in child health and development, professional development needs and role satisfaction. Data were collected from June 2010–April 2011. Results. Respondents (N = 159) reported having a significant role in well and sick child care and were interested in extending their role. Frequent activities included immunization, phone triage/advice, child health/development advice, wound care and Healthy Kids Checks. However, few had paediatric/child nursing backgrounds or postgraduate qualifications in paediatric nursing and they reported limited preparation for the role. Practice Nurses reported difficulties with keeping up-to-date with child health information and advising parents confidently. Satisfaction was relatively low regarding opportunities and encouragement to undertake professional development and expand scope of practice. Conclusion. Practice Nurses are largely unprepared to meet the demands of their child health role and need support to develop and maintain the skills and knowledge base necessary for high-quality, evidence-based practice. Both financial and time support is needed to enable Practice Nurses to access child health professional development.

Systems modelling of the socio-technical aspects of residential electricity use and network peak demand

Provision of network infrastructure to meet rising network peak demand is increasing the cost of electricity. Addressing this demand is a major imperative for Australian electricity agencies. The network peak demand model reported in this paper provides a quantified decision support tool and a means of understanding the key influences and impacts on network peak demand. An investigation of the system factors impacting residential consumers’ peak demand for electricity was undertaken in Queensland, Australia. Technical factors, such as the customers’ location, housing construction and appliances, were combined with social factors, such as household demographics, culture, trust and knowledge, and Change Management Options (CMOs) such as tariffs, price,managed supply, etc., in a conceptual ‘map’ of the system. A Bayesian network was used to quantify the model and provide insights into the major influential factors and their interactions. The model was also used to examine the reduction in network peak demand with different market-based and government interventions in various customer locations of interest and investigate the relative importance of instituting programs that build trust and knowledge through well designed customer-industry engagement activities. The Bayesian network was implemented via a spreadsheet with a tick box interface. The model combined available data from industry-specific and public sources with relevant expert opinion. The results revealed that the most effective intervention strategies involve combining particular CMOs with associated education and engagement activities. The model demonstrated the importance of designing interventions that take into account the interactions of the various elements of the socio-technical system. The options that provided the greatest impact on peak demand were Off-Peak Tariffs and Managed Supply and increases in the price of electricity. The impact in peak demand reduction differed for each of the locations and highlighted that household numbers, demographics as well as the different climates were significant factors. It presented possible network peak demand reductions which would delay any upgrade of networks, resulting in savings for Queensland utilities and ultimately for households. The use of this systems approach using Bayesian networks to assist the management of peak demand in different modelled locations in Queensland provided insights about the most important elements in the system and the intervention strategies that could be tailored to the targeted customer segments.

Curriculum reform in testing and accountability contexts

Recent international educational developments have important implications for the skills and understandings in curriculum and assessment that teachers develop, both in pre-service and in practice. Global developments in curriculum and assessment reform require teachers to utilise a network of knowledges and develop a repertoire of assessment skills and understandings. In a context of testing, accountability and auditing, data analysis skills are increasingly required to examine pedagogic practices for the development of intervention teaching and learning strategies to improve learning outcomes for all students (Marsh, 2009). However, too often the data are used predominantly for accountability purposes that serve at national levels as a catalyst for measurement, comparison and allocation of funding (Lingard and Sellar, 2013). With increased accountability demands brought about by global competitiveness and programs for international measurement of educational attainment, there has also emerged an increase in the use of testing, which in some countries has become the dominant form of assessment. For example in Australia, national testing of students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 began in 2008 under the National Australia Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). The results from this program for each school are published on the My School website (www.myschool.edu.au), increasing the competitive nature of the testing and intensifying the demands on teachers and schools. In particular, there has been a shift in the enacted curriculum in Australia to a focus on literacy and numeracy because the curriculum is tested.

The literacy curriculum: A critical review

This is a critical review of the scope of the literacy curriculum in the twenty-first century, uncovering the strengths, controversies, and silences that have divided literacy researchers and educators. It conceptualizes the literacy curriculum as a particular set of socially organized symbolic practices that are always selective, and which are inextricably connected to the function and organization of schooling. We trace the political, historical, and ideological antecedents of literacy curriculum and schooling as a form of cultural apparatus of the nation-state, before tracing some of the major interpretive paradigms that have influenced the shape of the literacy curriculum in many parts of the world. These include debates about skills-based approaches, whole language, systemic functional grammar, and critical literacy. It then draws attention to noteworthy advances and shifts in the field over recent decades: debates about the role of orality in the literacy curriculum, home-school community literacy practices, teacher and student knowledge of language and grammar, and the role of curriculum area literacies. It anticipates the future of the literacy curriculum in online textual environments and the changing sensorial and material nature of literacy practices, while acknowledging that curriculum innovation is always limited in complex ways by historically established pedagogic discourses of schooling.

Teaching pragmatics in an EFL context: Implications for coursebook design, teaching and learning

This case study examined the use of global English language teaching coursebooks by five teachers to teach English language use to students in Thailand where English is a foreign language. Despite the complexities of English language use in Thailand, the coursebook and teachers emphasised sets of decontextualised linguistic structures to teach speaking and conversation. The students interpreted and applied the structures in different ways with varied awareness of the effects of their linguistic choices. Teachers were constrained by the coursebook, their understandings of culture, and knowledge of how to teach pragmatics highlighting implications for teacher education and coursebook design.

Childhood-as-rescue in the emergence and spread of the U.S. public school

In this volume, the editors have brought together prominent international contributors to examine the relevance of Foucauldian thought on educational theory, practice and institutional life. The result is a diverse collection that offers broad and engaging analyses of how power and knowledge are configured in the practices and norms of schooling. This text not only provides a critical examination of the significance of Foucauldian thought for education, but also discusses how Foucault's theories are arrayed in the everyday life of schools.

In Perpetual Motion: Theories of Power, Educational History, and the Child

"In Perpetual Motion is an "historical choreography" of power, pedagogy, and the child from the 1600s to the early 1900s. It breaks new ground by historicizing the analytics of power and motion that have interpenetrated renditions of the young. Through a detailed examination of the works of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Herbart, and G. Stanley Hall, this book maps the discursive shifts through which the child was given a unique nature, inscribed in relation to reason, imbued with an effectible interiority, and subjected to theories of power and motion. The book illustrates how developmentalist visions took hold in U.S. public school debates. It documents how particular theories of power became submerged and taken for granted as essences inside the human subject. In Perpetual Motion studiously challenges views of power as in or of the gaze, tracing how different analytics of power have been used to theorize what gazing could notice."--BOOK JACKET.

From Polymorph Screening to Dissolution Testing - Solid Phase Analysis during Pharmaceutical Development and Manufacturing

Solid materials can exist in different physical structures without a change in chemical composition. This phenomenon, known as polymorphism, has several implications on pharmaceutical development and manufacturing. Various solid forms of a drug can possess different physical and chemical properties, which may affect processing characteristics and stability, as well as the performance of a drug in the human body. Therefore, knowledge and control of the solid forms is fundamental to maintain safety and high quality of pharmaceuticals. During manufacture, harsh conditions can give rise to unexpected solid phase transformations and therefore change the behavior of the drug. Traditionally, pharmaceutical production has relied on time-consuming off-line analysis of production batches and finished products. This has led to poor understanding of processes and drug products. Therefore, new powerful methods that enable real time monitoring of pharmaceuticals during manufacturing processes are greatly needed. The aim of this thesis was to apply spectroscopic techniques to solid phase analysis within different stages of drug development and manufacturing, and thus, provide a molecular level insight into the behavior of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) during processing. Applications to polymorph screening and different unit operations were developed and studied. A new approach to dissolution testing, which involves simultaneous measurement of drug concentration in the dissolution medium and in-situ solid phase analysis of the dissolving sample, was introduced and studied. Solid phase analysis was successfully performed during different stages, enabling a molecular level insight into the occurring phenomena. Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy was utilized in screening of polymorphs and processing-induced transformations (PITs). Polymorph screening was also studied with NIR and Raman spectroscopy in tandem. Quantitative solid phase analysis during fluidized bed drying was performed with in-line NIR and Raman spectroscopy and partial least squares (PLS) regression, and different dehydration mechanisms were studied using in-situ spectroscopy and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). In-situ solid phase analysis with Raman spectroscopy during dissolution testing enabled analysis of dissolution as a whole, and provided a scientific explanation for changes in the dissolution rate. It was concluded that the methods applied and studied provide better process understanding and knowledge of the drug products, and therefore, a way to achieve better quality.

An account and analysis of the implementation of various ebook business models at QUT, Australia

QUT (Queensland University of Technology) is a leading university based in the city of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and is a selectively research intensive university with 2,500 higher degree research students and an overall student population of 45,000 students. The transition from print to online resources is largely completed and the library now provides access to 450,000 print books, 1,000 print journals, 600,000 ebooks, 120,000 ejournals and 100,000 online videos. The ebook collection is now used three times as much as the print book collection. This paper focuses on QUT Library’s ebook strategy and the challenges of building and managing a rapidly growing collection of ebooks using a range of publishers, platforms, and business and financial models. The paper provides an account of QUT Library’s experiences in using Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) using eBook Library (EBL); the strategic procurement of publisher and subject collections by lease and outright purchase models, the more recent transition to Evidence Based Selection (EBS) options provided by some publishers, and its piloting of etextbook models. The paper provides an in-depth analysis of each of these business models at QUT, focusing on access verses collection development, usage, cost per use, and value for money.

Turning the Kaleidoscope - (E)FL Educational Experience and Inquiry as Auto/biography

This book is a study on learning, teaching/counselling, and research on the two. My quest has been to find a pedagogically-motivated way of researching learning and teaching interaction, and in particular counselling, in an autonomous language-learning environment. I have tried to develop a method that would make room for lived experience, meaning-making and narrating, because in my view these all characterise learning encounters between language learners and counsellors, and learners and their peers. Lived experience as a source of meaning, telling and co-telling becomes especially significant when we try to listen to the diverse personal and academic voices of the past as expressed in autobiographical narratives. I have aimed at researching various ALMS dialogues (Autonomous Learning Modules, University of Helsinki Language Centre English course and programme), and autobiographical narratives within them, in a way that shows respect for the participants, and that is relevant, reflective and, most importantly, self-reflexive. My interest has been in autobiographical telling in (E)FL [(English as a) foreign language], both in students first-person written texts on their language- learning histories and in the sharing of stories between learners and a counsellor. I have turned to narrative inquiry in my quest and have written the thesis as an experiential narrative. In particular, I have studied learners and counsellors in one and the same story, as characters in one narrative, in an attempt to avoid the impression that I am telling yet another separate, anecdotal story, retrospectively. Through narrative, I have shed light on the subjective dimensions of language learning and experience, and have come closer to understanding the emotional aspects of learning encounters. I have questioned and rejected a distanced and objective approach to describing learning and teaching/counselling. I have argued for a holistic and experiential approach to (E)FL encounters in which there is a need to see emotion and cognition as intertwined, and thus to appreciate learners and counsellors emotionally-charged experiences as integral to their identities. I have also argued for a way of describing such encounters as they are situated in history, time, autobiography, and the learning context. I have turned my gaze on various constellations of lived experience: the data was collected on various occasions and in various settings during one course and consists of videotaped group sessions, individual counselling sessions between students and their group counsellor, biographic narrative interviews with myself, open-ended personally-inspired reflection texts written by the students about their language-learning histories, and student logs and diaries. I do not consider data collection an unproblematic occasion, or innocent practice, and I defend the integrity of the research process. Research writing cannot be separated from narrative field work and analysing and interpreting the data. The foci in my work have turned to be the following: 1) describing ALMS encounters and specifying their narrative aspects; 2) reconceptualising learner and teacher autonomy in ALMS and in (E)FL; 2) developing (E)FL methodologically through a teacher-researcher s identity work; 4) research writing as a dialogical narrative process, and the thesis as an experiential narrative. Identity and writing as inquiry, and the deeply narrative and autobiographical nature of the (E)FL teaching/counselling/researching have come to the fore in this research. Research writing as a relational activity and its implications for situated ways of knowing and knowledge turned out to be important foci. I have also focussed on the context-bound and local teacher knowledge and ways of knowing about being a teacher, and I have argued for personal ways of knowing about, and learning and studying foreign languages. I discuss research as auto/biography: as a practising counsellor I use my own life and (E)FL experience to understand and interpret the stories of the research participants even though I was not involved in their course work. The supposedly static binaries of learner/teacher, and also learner autonomy/teacher autonomy, are thus brought into the discussion. I have highlighted the infinite variability and ever-changing nature of learning and teaching English, but the book is also of relevance to foreign language education in general.

Fostering interpersonal trust on social media: Physicians' perspectives and experiences

Background The problem of developing and sustaining mutual trust is one of the main barriers to knowledge sharing on social media platforms such as blogs, wikis, micro-blogs and social networking websites. While many studies argue that mutual trust is necessary for online communication and knowledge sharing, few have actually explored and demonstrated how physicians can establish and sustain trusted relationships on social media. Objectives To identify approaches through which physicians establish interpersonal trust on social media. Methods Twenty-four physicians, who were active users of social media, were interviewed using a semi-structured approach between 2013 and 2014. Snowball sampling was employed for participant recruitment. The data were analysed using a thematic analysis approach. Results Physicians trust their peers on social media in a slightly different way than in face-to-face communication. The study found that the majority of participants established trust on social media mainly through previous personal interaction, authenticity and relevancy of voice, professional standing, consistency of communication, peer recommendation, and non-anonymous and moderated sites. Conclusions Healthcare professionals need to approach social media carefully when using it for knowledge sharing, networking and developing trusted relations with like-minded peers.

From inferential statistics to climate knowledge

Climate variability and change are risk factors for climate sensitive activities such as agriculture. Managing these risks requires "climate knowledge", i.e. a sound understanding of causes and consequences of climate variability and knowledge of potential management options that are suitable in light of the climatic risks posed. Often such information about prognostic variables (e.g. yield, rainfall, run-off) is provided in probabilistic terms (e.g. via cumulative distribution functions, CDF), whereby the quantitative assessments of these alternative management options is based on such CDFs. Sound statistical approaches are needed in order to assess whether difference between such CDFs are intrinsic features of systems dynamics or chance events (i.e. quantifying evidences against an appropriate null hypothesis). Statistical procedures that rely on such a hypothesis testing framework are referred to as "inferential statistics" in contrast to descriptive statistics (e.g. mean, median, variance of population samples, skill scores). Here we report on the extension of some of the existing inferential techniques that provides more relevant and adequate information for decision making under uncertainty.