‘That's how it works here’: The place of religion in publicly managed second-level schools in Ireland

This article problematises the place of religion within publicly managed Education and Training Board (ETB) schools in the Republic of Ireland. The study draws on interview data from 43 school personnel across 18 ETB second-level schools, as well as eight interviews with ETB Education/Chief Executive Officers. Having established the legal and historical contexts, the place of religion is explored from the perspective of school life and prescribed curriculum. Across the 18 schools, the prescribed curriculum for Religious Education did not take the form of ‘faith formation’. Rather, focus was placed on exploring all world religions. However, this compares with the role of religion within the life of the school; 14 of the 18 participating schools had religious dimensions as part of school life. Half of these schools (n = 7) were Designated Community Colleges, while the remainder were Non-Designated (n = 7). The religious dimension was always Catholic in nature. Bar a few exceptions, the role of religion within the life of the school remained largely unquestioned by school personnel. The article explores the findings in light of the legislative and historical contexts.     

Differential supervision and cognitive structure effects on empathy and counseling effectiveness

The present study investigated the effects of didactic and experiential supervision procedures on the judged counseling effectiveness of high and low cognitive complexity counselor trainees. Subjects in the two supervision groups (N=16) were trained in attending, questioning, and reflection of feeling over three sessions. Training consisted of exposure to videotaped counseling models, discussion of the model's behavior with the supervisor, videotaped role playing of therapy, and discussion of the therapy with the supervisor. Training was exactly the same for both groups except for supervision. A control group (N=8) did not receive any training. All subjects, including controls, were pre- and post-tested for counseling effectiveness as measured by judged tape ratings on the 25-item Counselor Effectiveness Scale and four scales designed to assess affective, exploratory, listening, and honest labeling responses.High complex subjects responsed more favorably to the didactic supervision significantly outperforming both the high complex controls and the low complex didactic subjects on four of the five dependent measures, whereas high and low complex subjects did not respond differentially to the experiential supervision. The results were discussed in terms of fitting the complexity of the students to the supervision approach in selecting students for counseling programs.This paper was presented at the International Round Table for the Advancement of Counselling, Thessaloniki, Greece, April 1980, and was based partly on the senior author's doctoral disser tation (University of Maine, 1978).     

A comparative study on oxidative stress and antioxidant status in ischemic stroke patients with and without diabetes

The study was conducted to find out the extent of lipid peroxidation and antioxidant status in ischemic stroke patients (ISPs) with and without diabetes. Malondialdehyde (MDA) was studied as a marker of lipid peroxidation. Glutathione (GSH), uric acid and ceruloplasmin were estimated to study the antioxidant potential of ISPs. Significantly higher levels of MDA were found in both the groups of ISPs and the increase in MDA was more in ISPs without diabetes. GSH levels were decreased significantly in both the groups of ISPs and maximum decline was found in ISPs with diabetes. Uric acid levels were significantly increased in both the groups of ISPs. Ceruloplasmin levels were increased significantly in ISPs without diabetes, whereas its levels were slightly decreased in ISPs with diabetes. A negative correlation was found between MDA and the antioxidants GSH, uric acid and ceruloplasmin in ISPs with diabetes. This study suggests that there is an association between ischemic stroke and increased oxidative stress and the antioxidant potential is impaired in both the groups of ISPs with and without diabetes.     

Size-dependent trajectories of DNA macromolecules due to insulative dielectrophoresis in submicrometer-deep fluidic channels

In this paper, we demonstrate for the first time that insulative dielectrophoresis can induce size-dependent trajectories of DNA macromolecules. We experimentally use λ (48.5 kbp) and T4GT7 (165.6 kbp) DNA molecules flowing continuously around a sharp corner inside fluidic channels with a depth of 0.4 μm. Numerical simulation of the electrokinetic force distribution inside the channels is in qualitative agreement with our experimentally observed trajectories. We discuss a possible physical mechanism for the DNA polarization and dielectrophoresis inside confining channels, based on the observed dielectrophoresis responses due to different DNA sizes and various electric fields applied between the inlet and the outlet. The proposed physical mechanism indicates that further extensive investigations, both theoretically and experimentally, would be very useful to better elucidate the forces involved at DNA dielectrophoresis. When applied for size-based sorting of DNA molecules, our sorting method offers two major advantages compared to earlier attempts with insulative dielectrophoresis: Its continuous operation allows for high-throughput analysis, and it only requires electric field strengths as low as ∼10 V∕cm.     

Acrosin activity in spermatozoa of infertile Nigerian males

The objective of this study was to evaluate acrosin activity in spermatozoa of infertile Nigerian men and to compare with those of the fertile men. The acrosin activity was evaluated using the Acroscreen reagent kit. The acrosin activity of the fertile men was 40.7±5.2 mIU/10⁶ sperm (range 30.1–51.3) and those of the infertile men was 22.4±8.33 mIU/10⁶ sperm (range 5.7–39.1). The difference in the mean was statistically significant (P<0.001). There was a subpopulation of the infertile men who had their acrosin activity within normal range of the fertile men, 32.9±1.57 mIU/10⁶ sperm. But the difference in the mean was statistically significant (P<0.001). Acrosin activity decreased with increased morphological changes in the spermatozoa. It is concluded that acrosin activity in the infertile Nigerian men is significantly lower than that in the fertile men. Acrosin activity may also be affected by morphological changes in the spermatozoa.     

Improving the learning of Boolean queries by means of a multiobjective IQBE evolutionary algorithm

The Inductive Query By Example (IQBE) paradigm allows a system to automatically derive queries for a specific Information Retrieval System (IRS). Classic IRSs based on this paradigm [Smith, M., & Smith, M. (1997). The use of genetic programming to build Boolean queries for text retrieval through relevance feedback. Journal of Information Science, 23(6), 423–431] generate a single solution (Boolean query) in each run, that with the best fitness value, which is usually based on a weighted combination of the basic performance criteria, precision and recall.