Supporting schools in identifying and safeguarding the needs of disabled children: the challenges for data collection

Conceptualisations of disability that emphasise the contextual and cultural nature of disability and the embodiment of these within a national system of data collection present a number of challenges especially where this process is devolved to schools. The requirement for measures based on contextual and subjective experiences gives rise to particular difficulties in achieving parity in the way data is analysed and reported. This paper presents an account of the testing of a tool intended for use by schools as they collect data from parents to identify children who meet the criteria of disability established in Disability Discrimination Acts (DDAs). Data were validated through interviews with parents and teachers and observations of children and highlighted the pivotal role of the criterion of impact. The findings are set in the context of schools meeting their legal duties to identify disabled children and their support needs in a way that captures the complexity of disabled children’s school lives and provides useful and useable data.

The use and usefulness of a parent questionnaire to help schools identify disability

The Equality Act 2010 will be implemented in full in 2011, and schools in the UK will have to provide special aids or services for children with disabilities where this provision is considered reasonable. This paper reports on staff perspectives on the use and usefulness of a parental questionnaire on disability from a sample of 49 schools (mainstream and special) located in 12 local authorities. Most schools found the process of administering the parent questionnaire undemanding; just under half of the sample indicated that they would take some action as a result of the data collected from the parental questionnaire (e.g., to inform plans for targeting or monitoring support for children, and to contact parents and follow-up issues they had mentioned); and about one-third of schools recorded unanticipated findings from the parental questionnaire, that is, the identification of children whose disabilities were not previously known to the school. Implications for schools are discussed.

Testing of disability identification tool for schools

There has been an ongoing concern about the lack of reliable data on disabled children in schools. To date there has been no consistent way of identifying and categorising disabilities. Schools in England are currentlyrequired to collect data on children with Special Educational Need (SEN), but this does not capture information about all disabled children. The lack of this information may seriously restrict capacity at all levels of policy and practice to understand and respond to the needs of disabled children and their families in line with Disability Discrimination Act (2005) and the single Equality Act (2010). The aim of the project was to test the draft tools for identifying disability and accompanying guidance in a sample of all types of maintained schools in order to assess their usability and reliability and whether they resulted in the generation of robust and consistent data that could reliably inform school returns for the annual School Census.

Recovering the counterfactual wage distribution with selective return migration

This paper recovers the distribution of wages for Mexican-born workers living in the U.S. if no return migration of Mexican-born workers occurred. Because migrants self-select in the decision to return, the overarching problem addressed by this study is the use of an estimator that also accounts for selection on unobservables. I find that Mexican returnees are middle- to high-wage earners at all levels of educational attainment. Taking into account self-selection in return migration, wages would be approximately 7.7% higher at the median and 4.5% higher at the mean. Owing to positive self-selection, the immigrant-native wage gap would, therefore, partially close if there was no return migration.

Rapid selective separation of americium/curium from simulated nuclear forensic matrices using triazine ligands

In analysis of complex nuclear forensic samples containing lanthanides, actinides and matrix elements, rapid selective extraction of Am/Cm for quantification is challenging, in particular due the difficult separation of Am/Cm from lanthanides. Here we present a separation process for Am/Cm(III) which is achieved using a combination of AG1-X8 chromatography followed by Am/Cm extraction with a triazine ligand. The ligands tested in our process were CyMe4-BTPhen, CyMe4- BTBP, CA-BTP and CA-BTPhen. Our process allows for purification and quantification of Am and Cm (recoveries 80%–100%) and other major actinides in < 2d without the use of multiple columns or thiocyanate. The process is unaffected by high level Ca(II)/Fe(III)/Al(III) (10mg mL−1) and thus requires little pre-treatment of samples.

Selective environmental stress caused by magmatic sulfur emissions from continental flood basalt eruptions

Several biotic crises during the past 300 million years have been linked to episodes of continental flood basalt volcanism, and in particular to the release of massive quantities of magmatic sulphur gas species. Flood basalt provinces were typically formed by numerous individual eruptions, each lasting years to decades. However, the environmental impact of these eruptions may have been limited by the occurrence of quiescent periods that lasted hundreds to thousands of years. Here we use a global aerosol model to quantify the sulphur-induced environmental effects of individual, decade-long flood basalt eruptions representative of the Columbia River Basalt Group, 16.5–14.5 million years ago, and the Deccan Traps, 65 million years ago. For a decade-long eruption of Deccan scale, we calculate a decadal-mean reduction in global surface temperature of 4.5 K, which would recover within 50 years after an eruption ceased unless climate feedbacks were very different in deep-time climates. Acid mists and fogs could have caused immediate damage to vegetation in some regions, but acid-sensitive land and marine ecosystems were well-buffered against volcanic sulphur deposition effects even during century-long eruptions. We conclude that magmatic sulphur from flood basalt eruptions would have caused a biotic crisis only if eruption frequencies and lava discharge rates had been high and sustained for several centuries at a time.

Effects of selective logging on tropical forest tree growth

We combined measurements of tree growth and carbon dioxide exchange to investigate the effects of selective logging on the Aboveground Live Biomass (AGLB) of a tropical rain forest in the Amazon. Most of the measurements began at least 10 months before logging and continued at least 36 months after logging. The logging removed similar to 15% of the trees with Diameter at Breast Height (DBH) greater than 35 cm, which resulted in an instantaneous 10% reduction in AGLB. Both wood production and mortality increased following logging, while Gross Primary Production (GPP) was unchanged. The ratio of wood production to GPP (the wood Carbon Use Efficiency or wood CUE) more than doubled following logging. Small trees (10 cm < DBH < 35 cm) accounted for most of the enhanced wood production. Medium trees (35 cm < DBH < 55 cm) that were within 30 m of canopy gaps created by the logging also showed increased growth. The patterns of enhanced growth are most consistent with logging-induced increases in light availability. The AGLB continued to decline over the study, as mortality outpaced wood production. Wood CUE and mortality remained elevated throughout the 3 years of postlogging measurements. The future trajectory of AGLB and the forest`s carbon balance are uncertain, and will depend on how long it takes for heterotrophic respiration, mortality, and CUE to return to prelogging levels.

Selective preying of the sphecid wasp Trachypus boharti on the meliponine bee Scaptotrigona postica: potential involvement of caste-specific cuticular hydrocarbons

The specialist digger wasp Trachypus boharti Rubio-Espina preys exclusively on males of the stingless bee Scaptotrigona postica Latreille 1807, although the hunting attacks involve both male and worker bees of S. postica and members of its own species. To understand the mechanism of prey selection, the cuticular hydrocarbon patterns of workers and males of S. postica are analyzed in detail, and the mandibular secretion of males is examined. The cuticular profiles of males and workers are distinctively different. The major group of cuticular compounds, heptacosene isomers, is twice as abundant in workers as in males. There is no clear distinction between worker and male mandibular secretions. Such a distinct and straightforward caste-specific difference in cuticular hydrocarbons could function as a recognition cue by which T. boharti distinguishes between workers and males of S. postica.

Contextual, but not auditory, fear conditioning is disrupted by neurotoxic selective lesion of the basal nucleus of amygdala in rats

The basolateral amygdala complex (BLA) is involved in acquisition of contextual and auditory fear conditioning. However, the BLA is not a single structure but comprises a group of nuclei, including the lateral (LA), basal (BA) and accessory basal (AB) nuclei. While it is consensual that the LA is critical for auditory fear conditioning, there is controversy on the participation of the BA in fear conditioning. Hodological and neurophysiological findings suggest that each of these nuclei processes distinct information in parallel; the BA would deal with polymodal or contextual representations, and the LA would process unimodal or elemental representations. Thus, it seems plausible to hypothesize that the BA is required for contextual, but not auditory, fear conditioning. This hypothesis was evaluated in Wistar rats submitted to multiple-site ibotenate-induced damage restricted to the BA and then exposed to a concurrent contextual and auditory fear conditioning training followed by separated contextual and auditory conditioning testing. Differing from electrolytic lesion and lidocaine inactivation, this surgical approach does not disturb fibers of passage originating in other brain areas, restricting damage to the aimed nucleus. Relative to the sham-operated controls, rats with selective damage to the BA exhibited disruption of performance in the contextual, but not the auditory, component of the task. Thus, while the BA seems required for contextual fear conditioning, it is not critical for both an auditory-US association, nor for the expression of the freezing response. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Modulation of inflammatory response by selective inhibition of cyclooxygenase-1 and cyclooxygenase-2 in acute kidney injury

This work explored the role of inhibition of cyclooxygenases (COXs) in modulating the inflammatory response triggered by acute kidney injury. C57Bl/6 mice were used. Animals were treated or not with indomethacin (IMT) prior to injury (days -1 and 0). Animals were subjected to 45 min of renal pedicle occlusion and sacrificed at 24 h after reperfusion. Serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen, reactive oxygen species (ROS), kidney myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity, and prostaglandin E2 (PGE(2)) levels were analyzed. Tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha, t-bet, interleukin (IL)-10, IL-1 beta, heme oxygenase (HO)-1, and prostaglandin E synthase (PGES) messenger RNA (mRNA) were studied. Cytokines were quantified in serum. IMT-treated animals presented better renal function with less acute tubular necrosis and reduced ROS and MPO production. Moreover, the treatment was associated with lower expression of TNF-alpha, PGE(2), PGES, and t-bet and upregulation of HO-1 and IL-10. This profile was mirrored in serum, where inhibition of COXs significantly decreased interferon (IFN)-gamma, TNF-alpha, and IL-12 p70 and upregulated IL-10. COXs seem to play an important role in renal ischemia and reperfusion injury, involving the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines, activation of neutrophils, and ROS production. Inhibition of COX pathway is intrinsically involved with cytoprotection.

The Thyroid Hormone Receptor (TR) beta-Selective Agonist GC-1 Inhibits Proliferation But Induces Differentiation and TR beta mRNA Expression in Mouse and Rat Osteoblast-Like Cells

Previous studies showed anabolic effects of GC-1, a triiodothyronine (T3) analogue that is selective for both binding and activation functions of thyroid hormone receptor (TR) beta 1 over TR alpha 1, on bone tissue in vivo. The aim of this study was to investigate the responsiveness of rat (ROS17/2.8) and mouse (MC3T3-E1) osteoblast-like cells to GC-1. As expected, T3 inhibited cellular proliferation and stimulated mRNA expression of osteocalcin or alkaline phosphatase in both cell lineages. Whereas equimolar doses of T3 and GC-1 equally affected these parameters in ROS17/2.8 cells, the effects of GC-1 were more modest compared to those of T3 in MC3T3-E1 cells. Interestingly, we showed that there is higher expression of TR alpha 1 than TR beta 1 mRNA in rat (similar to 20-90%) and mouse (similar to 90-98%) cell lineages and that this difference is even higher in mouse cells, which highlights the importance of TR alpha 1 to bone physiology and may partially explain the modest effects of GC-1 in comparison with T3 in MC3T3-E1 cells. Nevertheless, we showed that TR beta 1 mRNA expression increases (similar to 2.8- to 4.3-fold) as osteoblastic cells undergo maturation, suggesting a key role of TR beta 1 in mediating T3 effects in the bone forming cells, especially in mature osteoblasts. It is noteworthy that T3 and GC-1 induced TR beta 1 mRNA expression to a similar extent in both cell lineages (similar to 2- to 4-fold), indicating that both ligands may modulate the responsiveness of osteoblasts to T3. Taken together, these data show that TR beta selective T3 analogues have the potential to directly induce the differentiation and activity of osteoblasts.

Selective Wrapping and Supramolecular Structures of Polyfluorene-Carbon Nanotube Hybrids

We report on the photophysical properties of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) suspensions In toluene solutions of poly[9,9-dioctylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl](PFO). Steady-state and time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy in the near-infrared and visible spectral regions are used to study the interaction of the dispersed SWNTs with the wrapped polymer. Molecular dynamics simulations of the PFO-SWNT hybrids in toluene were carried out to evaluate the energetics of different wrapping geometries. The simulated fluorescence spectra in the visible region were obtained by the quantum chemical ZINDO-CI method, using a sampling of structures obtained from the dynamics trajectories. The tested schemes consider polymer chains aligned along the nanotube axis, where chirality has a minimal effect, or forming helical structures, where a preference for high chiral angles is evidenced. Moreover, toluene affects the polymer structure favoring the helical conformation. Simulations show that the most stable hybrid system is the PFO-wrapped (8,6) nanotube, in agreement with the experimentally observed selectivity.