Lichens and pollution monitoring

Lichens are traditionally cited as the prime example of mutual symbiosis in the plant kingdom. Scientifically fascinating, they are now receiving increasing attention by applied biologists for pollution monitoring. The present article explains the reasons why lichens are suitable for this role and reviews the techniques currently employed.     

Religious literacy,moral recognition,and strong relationality

Several proposals for addressing religious literacy or including religious content in American public schools point to potential advantages for intellectual and moral development. These proposals include moral arguments, which suggest that religious literacy is an individual and social good. Although the proposals selected for this analysis span the previous two decades, it appears that little progress has been made toward addressing religious literacy in American public school contexts. In this theoretical article, I examine several of these proposals using a philosophical contrast between weak and strong relationality. It is argued that although these proposals include strong relational assumptions, weak relational assumptions remain that could inhibit the successful implementation of these proposals—or perhaps even undermine their ultimate goals.     

On pigs and packers: Radically contextualizing a practice of science with Mexican immigrant students

This paper reports on instructional practices observed in a high school English Learner (EL) Science course serving newcomer Mexican immigrant youth. The school is located in a rural Midwestern meatpacking community in which labor at the hog plant is economically- and racially-segmented; it is the town’s Mexican residents, many of them undocumented, who comprise most of the unskilled labor force. The general purpose of the paper is to document how the economic and racial context of this community influences science instruction in the EL Science course and to describe how this presents particular challenges in achieving equitable science instruction for Mexican immigrant youth in these rural, globalizing places. Entering the data via critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) and then utilizing Barton’s (2003) “practice of science” perspective, with an eye toward achieving “radical contextuality” (Grossberg, 1997), we describe the science events, identities, and structures of the pig dissection lesson and detail how what these students could do with science, as rendered by that lesson, was limited by the roles the teacher attributed to the students, her inability to draw on their funds of knowledge as resources for learning, and the voice and position she allowed them to take up. The data reinforce conventional understandings of schools as sites of cultural reproduction (Bowels & Gintis, 1976), as well as of resistance (Giroux, 1983), but afford us a glimpse of the particularity of those mechanisms within the demographically-transitioning American Heartland, iconic of the era of global capitalism.

Information and informatics literacies of first-year medical students

Purpose

The study evaluated medical students'' familiarity with information literacy and informatics during the health sciences library orientation.

Methods

A survey was fielded at the start of the 2013 school year.

Results

Seventy-two of 77 students (94%) completed the survey. Over one-half (57%) expected to use library research materials and services. About half (43%) expected to use library physical space. Students preferred accessing biomedical research on laptops and learning via online-asynchronous modes.

Conclusions

The library identified areas for service development and outreach to medical students and academic departments.     

Coping with dyslexia in the regular classroom: Inclusion or exclusion

The article begins with an historical review of the many attempts to cope with learning disabled and other handicapped children in schools, especially in regular classrooms. Children with dyslexia are reportedly the majority of individuals with learning disabilities. Most researchers have reached concensus that dyslexia originates with specific impairment of language processing. Although it would seem necessary for educators, especially those who teach the primary grades, to understand the structure of the English language and the alphabetic writing system, there is evidence that teachers are not required to have such command of language and how to teach it. The need for establishment of a comprehensive, interdisciplinary teacher education and training program will be discussed. This would include a core body of knowledge, relevant skills, and an understanding of methods, attitudes and values of participating disciplines. Without appropriate changes in teacher preparation it is doubtful that inclusion in regular classrooms will provide much educational benefit for the dyslexic population in our schools.     

Acute and chronic effects of foam rolling vs eccentric exercise on ROM and force output of the plantar flexors

Foam rolling and eccentric exercise interventions have been demonstrated to improve range of motion (ROM). However, these two modalities have not been directly compared. Twenty-three academy soccer players (age: 18 ± 1; height: 1.74 ± 0.08 m; body mass: 69.3 ± 7.5 kg) were randomly allocated to either a foam rolling (FR) or eccentric exercise intervention designed to improve dorsiflexion ROM. Participants performed the intervention daily for a duration of four weeks. Measurements of dorsiflexion ROM, isometric plantar flexion torque and drop jump reactive strength index were taken at baseline (pre-intervention) and at three subsequent time-points (30-min post, 24-hours post and 4-weeks post). A significant time x group interaction effect was observed for dorsiflexion (P = 0.036), but not for torque or reactive strength index. For dorsiflexion, there was a significant increase in both acute (30-min; P < 0.001) and chronic (4-week; P < 0.001) ROM for the eccentric group, whilst FR exhibited only an acute improvement (P < 0.001). Eccentric training would appear a more efficacious modality than foam rolling for improving dorsiflexion ROM in elite academy soccer players.