Clinical and diagnostic utility of saliva as a non-invasive diagnostic fluid:?a systematic review

This systematic review presents the latest trends in salivary research and its applications in health and disease. Among the large number of analytes present in saliva, many are affected by diverse physiological and pathological conditions. Further, the non-invasive, easy and cost-effective collection methods prompt an interest in evaluating its diagnostic or prognostic utility. Accumulating data over the past two decades indicates towards the possible utility of saliva to monitor overall health, diagnose and treat various oral or systemic disorders and drug monitoring. Advances in saliva based systems biology has also contributed towards identification of several biomarkers, development of diverse salivary diagnostic kits and other sensitive analytical techniques. However, its utilization should be carefully evaluated in relation to standardization of pre-analytical and analytical variables, such as collection and storage methods, analyte circadian variation, sample recovery, prevention of sample contamination and analytical procedures. In spite of all these challenges, there is an escalating evolution of knowledge with the use of this biological matrix.Key words: saliva, non-invasive, biological markers, drug monitoring, oral health     

Teaching children how to include the inversion principle in their reasoning about quantitative relations

The basis of this intervention study is a distinction between numerical calculus and relational calculus. The former refers to numerical calculations and the latter to the analysis of the quantitative relations in mathematical problems. The inverse relation between addition and subtraction is relevant to both kinds of calculus, but so far research on improving children’s understanding and use of the principle of inversion through interventions has only been applied to the solving of a + b − b = ? sums. The main aim of the intervention described in this article was to study the effects of teaching children about the explicit use of inversion as part of the relational calculus needed to solve inverse addition and subtraction problems using a calculator. The study showed that children taught about relational calculus differed significantly from those who were taught numerical procedures, and also that effects of the intervention were stronger when children were taught about relational calculus with mixtures of indirect and direct word problems than when these two types of problem were given to them in separate blocks.     

Engaged Scholarship in the Academy: Reflections from the Margins

This paper represents a series of reflections on collective and individual efforts of diverse women scholars to reconcile alternative views of scholarship within the academy. We document our collective experience with embedding the concept of the “scholarship of engagement” in our practice of research, teaching, and service through a process of collaborative inquiry. In addition, we discuss individual efforts to challenge university colleagues and students (many of whom are teachers in training) to interrogate issues of social justice, diversity, and marginalization in their academic environments. Our experiences provide a critical examination of the supports needed for diverse women faculty who engage in critical dialogues that challenge traditional institutional structures while on the tenure path.     

Publication and citation patterns among LIS faculty: Profiling a “typical professor”

Research on publication and citation patterns generally focuses on prolific or highly cited authors or on highly ranked programs. This study investigates the work and influence of a cross-section of library and information science (LIS) researchers at various stages of their academic lives, using a random sample of faculty members at programs accredited by the American Library Association. The analysis shows that the number of publications increases steadily as faculty rank advances. Assistant professors publish more conference papers and fewer journal articles, a pattern that is reversed with associate and full professors. Researchers used Web of Science® and Google™ Scholar to determine the influence of the publications. Web of Science reported no citations for most LIS faculty publications. With its broader scope, Google Scholar located more citations and revealed that the works of professors are cited significantly more frequently than publications by assistant or associate professors. When faculty profiles are compared by type of program, faculty members at schools granting doctoral degrees publish significantly more than their counterparts at schools where there is no doctoral program or where the doctoral degree is offered jointly with other academic units. When the comparison is made across ranks, full professors publish significantly more than faculty members at other ranks. There is no significant difference between assistant and associate professors.