Impact ‘fingerprints’ and preliminary implications for an ‘intelligent mouthguard’ head impact dosimeter

An in vivo head impact dosimeter, termed the ??intelligent mouthguard??, is under development at the Cleveland Clinic. The intelligent mouthguard facilitates correlation of acute and accumulative impact dosage with injury risk. As part of intelligent mouthguard dosimetry development for boxing and mixed martial arts participants, head and neck impact dosage was quantified in the laboratory for seven (7) punch types. Impact dosage data for punches were collected, which generated unique ??fingerprints?? for use with the intelligent mouthguard computational algorithm. Additional calculations were made on parameters based on each punch ??fingerprint?? and injury risk. Each of the punches had a unique ??fingerprint??. The hook imparted the most severe impact dosage, with the cross and oblique hook inducing the next most severe impact dosages, respectively. The impact dosage ??fingerprints?? determined here will be used to identify punch types during intelligent mouthguard human trials in 2012. Intelligent mouthguard dosimetry will be available soon for other contact sports (American Football, Ice Hockey, Lacrosse) to monitor head?Cneck impact dosage for correlation to acute or accumulative injury risk.     

Your vision with and without trigonometry

When you take a look at anything close-by, your brain computes the position of the object you see by solving a lanky triangle — namely the one formed with the object and your two eyes as its vertices. The brain may call other clues also into service while figuring out positions, especially when the lanky triangles prove far too lanky to afford trigonometric solutions with reasonable accuracy. These non-trigonometric alternatives can run into occasional pitfalls, though. Yet even the trigonometric highway isn’t always foolproof, either. We shall see in what follows that the resulting consequences can be as instructive as they are amusing.     

George Andrew Olah

Hungarian born American chemist, George Andrew Olah was a prolific researcher. The central theme of his career was the pursuit of structure and mechanisms in chemistry, particularly focused on electron-deficient intermediates. He leaves behind a large body of work comprising almost 1500 papers and twenty books for the scientific community. Some selected works have been published in three aptly entitled volumes, Across Conventional Lines.There is no way to capture the many contributions of Olah in a short essay. For this appreciation, we have chosen to high-light some of those contributions that to our mind represent a significant advance to the state of knowledge.     

Teachers’ Expectancy and Efficacy as Correlates of School Achievement in Delta, Mississippi

This study explored the relationship between school achievement levels and teachers’ expectations, locus of control and efficacy in four elementary schools in Delta, Mississippi in keeping with the self-fulfilling prophecy theory. Data from surveys of 102 teachers, five focus groups, observations, and secondary information on teachers’ grading pattern were used. Analyses using t-tests and multiple linear regressions revealed that teachers in high achieving schools tended to exhibit an internal locus of control and base their expectancies on students’ abilities rather than personal characteristics. School achievement level was found to be the only significant predictor indicating that high achieving schools had a culture of higher expectations that affected teachers’ perceptions, motivations, and grading pattern. These findings are substantiated by qualitative assessments.     

Comparison of Urinary Total Proteins by Four Different Methods

The total proteins in human urine have been compared by sulfosalicylic acid, sulfosalicylic acid with sodium sulphate and trichloroacetic acid methods with pyrogallol red molybdate method as there are no studies found quantifying imprecision and bias components. Fresh urine of 36 patients was analyzed by four methods. Imprecision and inaccuracy were determined by repeated analysis and method comparison studies using correlation plots, Bland and Altman, and Passing and Bablok regression analyses respectively. The coefficient of variation was 5.07 % for pyrogallol red molybdate; 6.84 % for sulfosalicylic acid; 3.97 % for sulfosalicylic acid with sodium sulphate and 5.93 % for trichloroacetic acid methods. Bland and Altman analysis showed a bias of 5.8, 1.7 and ?5.4 for pyrogallol red molybdate versus sulfosalicylic acid, sulfosalicylic acid with sodium sulphate and trichloroacetic acid methods respectively. Passing and Bablok regression revealed a constant bias for pyrogallol red molybdate versus all turbidimetric methods but a proportional bias only with trichloroacetic acid method. Sulfosalicylic acid with sodium sulphate method is preferred to sulfosalicylic acid and trichloroacetic acid methods.     

Official Discourse,Pedagogic Practice and Tribal Communities: a case study in contradiction

This paper examines the apparent internal coherence of a programme of agrarian development in India and the distortions and contradictions arising out of its practical implementation. Our object is to examine official policy with regard to tribal residential schools in India, known as ashram shalas. These schools represent an innovation and are different from the general type of day primary schools seen in rural India. In ashram schools, tribal pupils are provided free boarding facilities, together with free school uniforms, text books and other learning materials. These schools are expected to impart elementary education in areas which are remote and sparsely populated and where, on account of the geographical spread of the numerous hamlets, single teacher schools cannot be established.

Our study is aimed at understanding official policy in the context of ashram schools, and at providing an arena for bringing to the surface the fundamental contradictions played out in areas of the school situation, specifically relating to: (a) the school organisational structure; (b) the teaching practice; (c) dropout; (d) school‐community relations; and (e) area development.

The paper is presented in two major parts: (a) the first section will try to relate the functioning of the ashram schools to how the state plans and administers schools with respect to access to them; (b) the second section examines the ashram school as a locus of a wider and general social problem of relating education to social, economic and developmental purposes.