Maintenance and non-maintenance of community language in immigrant families: the case of Polish parents in the UK

ABSTRACT

This paper examines Polish immigrant parents’ perceptions of their community language value, the factors that shape their approaches to children’s language education, and the different outcomes on the spectrum of language maintenance/non-maintenance they achieve. It focuses on the empirical findings and interprets them with reference to Bourdieu’s theory of practice. It argues that a better understanding of migrants’ diverse experiences can be aided by an analysis of capital interactions and transformations in response to the socio-cultural environment. At the same time, it suggests that the negative impact of anti-migration socio-political structures and discourses on language practices should not be assumed.     

Interprofessional education in gross anatomy: Experience with first‐year medical and physical therapy students at Mayo Clinic

Interprofessional education (IPE) in clinical practice is believed to improve outcomes in health care delivery. Integrating teaching and learning objectives through cross discipline student interaction in basic sciences has the potential to initiate interprofessional collaboration at the early stages of health care education. Student attitudes and effectiveness of IPE in the context of a combined gross anatomy course for first‐year students in Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) and Doctor of Medicine (MD) degrees curricula were evaluated. Integrated teams of MD and DPT students participated in part of the gross anatomy dissection course at Mayo Medical School. A survey was administered to 42 MD and 28 DPT students that assessed their attitudes toward IPE and cooperation among health care professionals. Pre‐ and post‐experience surveys were evaluated. Positive comments were related to opportunities for developing a better understanding of the nature and scope of each other's programs, encouraging teamwork and communication, mutual respect, and reducing the perceptual divide between disciplines. Ninety‐two percent of the students agreed that interprofessional learning would help them in becoming a more effective member of the health care team. This initial experience with IPE in gross anatomy provides a basis for continued development of interdisciplinary educational strategies. Anat Sci Ed 1:258–263, 2008. © 2008 American Association of Anatomists.     

Benefit of the doubt approach to assessing the research performance of Australian universities

This paper proposes a benefit of the doubt (BoD) approach to assess the research performance of 37 public Australian universities based on data from 2015. The primary activities of Higher Education institutions are teaching and research, but the prestige of a university depends mainly on the results of its research activities. The BoD method is rooted in the data envelopment analysis methodology, which enables the flexible and data‐based assignment of weights to aggregated variables. Full weighting flexibility, however, allows zero weights, which can lead to unrealistic results. For this reason, the proposed model has been supplemented with additional weight restrictions. The assessment considers key performance factors: number of publications and citations; number of completed doctoral degrees; amount of research grants; and percentage of science graduates. Unlike earlier research on Australian universities, this study uses the number of publications and citations from the Web of Science database. The results provide a ranking of universities and recommendations for decision makers regarding the direction of future improvement actions for the worst‐performing universities.     

Revisit,Reform, and Redesign: A Novel Dissection Approach for Demonstrating Anatomy of the Orbit for Continuing Professional Development Education

Advanced postgraduate medical education for health-care professionals is constantly evolving. Understanding facial anatomy and especially its vascular system is crucial when performing soft tissue filler injections to avoid adverse events including tissue loss or irreversible blindness. Standard anatomical resources often fall short of elucidating clinically relevant concepts in more highly specialized areas of interest. A novel dissection approach for demonstrating the anatomy of the lateral orbit was presented at scientific meetings to participants from dermatology, plastic surgery, and general practice. Results from the post-course online survey (n = 52) were analyzed. The results of the survey reveal a high educational impact and a high clinical relevance of the novel dissection approach. In addition, the majority of respondents (97.7%; n = 51) felt that the exposed anatomical structure of the orbit and face improved their ability to safely perform cosmetic procedures on the face. More experienced respondents who had previously attended at least five cadaveric dissections were more likely to strongly agree that reviewing anatomy through this novel dissection approach increased their confidence in avoiding periorbital vascular danger zones. As minimally invasive outpatient procedures continue to evolve, practicing physicians and mid-level providers often face the challenge of having to reconcile preexisting anatomical knowledge with new clinical practice. Skills required to navigate high impact anatomy include visualization of structures that form the navigational landscape and avoidance of key danger zones. The novel dissection approach to the lateral orbit reflects the increasing focus on revisiting, reforming, and redesigning anatomy for continuing professional development activities.     

Dual-task effect on postural control in high-level competitive dancers

We investigated balance in 33 competitive dancers (17 females, 16 males) and 22 controls (17 females, 5 males) (age 16-27 years) on a force plate in two conditions: single task (quiet stance) and dual task (with a concurrent mental task). Balance was evaluated using centre-of-pressure shift (sway) variability, mean speed, frequency, and sample entropy. The effect of the dual task in the medio-lateral plane was comparable in both groups, decreasing sway variability (P < 0.05) and increasing mean speed (P < 0.001), frequency, and sample entropy (P < 0.001), showing that the participants effectively increased the level of automaticity. In the antero-posterior plane, the dual task also increased sway frequency and sample entropy (P < 0.01) in dancers without affecting their standing performance. In contrast, postural control in non-dancers was vulnerable to reduced cognitive investment, which adversely interfered with baseline performance. There were very high correlations between sway sample entropy and frequency in each group, plane, and task (r = 0.92-0.98, P < 0.001), indicating that both parameters may measure the same characteristic of postural control and that higher sway frequency may play an important role in protecting stability in dual tasking. The postural control of dancers and non-dancers appears to be similar, although dancing seems to facilitate the increased level of automatic control in the antero-posterior plane.     

Early career researchers and their publishing and authorship practices

This study presents findings from the first year of the Harbingers research project, a 3‐year longitudinal study of early career researchers (ECRs), which sought to ascertain current and changing habits in scholarly communication. The study recruited 116 science and social science ECRs from seven countries who were subject to in‐depth interviews, and this paper reports on findings regarding publishing and authorship practices and attitudes. A major objective was to determine whether ECRs are taking the myriad opportunities proffered by new digital innovations, developing within the context of open science, open access, and social media, to publish their research. The main finding is that these opportunities are generally not taken because ECRs are constrained by convention and the precarious employment environment they inhabit and know what is best for them, which is to publish (in high impact factor journals) or perish.     

Approach for electrodynamic force for compensation in low voltage circuit breaker WP 630-1.2 type

Undesirable repulsive force between contact members due to both a current path shrink near a real contact area and/or so-called pinch effect is particularly onerous for power switch applications, and results in either contact floating or bouncing which are associated with an electric arc following contact welding. This problem is of great importance for any circuit breaker especially for compact low voltage vacuum circuit breakers. To avoid contact floating at closure and during any inrush current under short circuit conditions, the electrodynamic repulsive force can be employed successfully if we use a special compensation system flexibly combined with the contact itself. However to select and design the compensation system properly, its efficiency has to be known. This paper presents an approach to obtain the electrodynamic force value depending on different shaped (rectangular, square, circle and arch) copper plates used in the compensator by using ANSYS for current values 40 kA RMS. Curve-fitting was done according to the calculating results, the optimization designing of compensation unit is based on them.     

Values Attributed to Marriage by Persons with Physical Disabilities

Within the so‐called normal society one can observe again and again symptoms of reluctance to being closely associated with people with physical disabilities. The general opinion is that this group of people is characterised by specific psychological and physical functioning and they are thought to have distinct needs and expectations as regards family life. To verify and confirm the above, comparative research was undertaken to find out how young able‐bodied, blind and persons using wheelchairs evaluate marriage. The subject of the research was the importance ascribed to the hierarchy of values related to marriage and family, and the types of needs satisfied through these institutions of social life. The participants were asked to evaluate such phenomena as love, sexual life and parenthood as well as expressing their attitude and opinion on conjugal infidelity. The results obtained do not indicate any significant differences in attitudes and views presented between the groups under consideration. All valued marriage and family life very highly and had similar expectations, however, not all will be able to fulfil their needs and aspirations in these areas. It will be quite complicated, especially so for those who are disabled. All possible failures are caused by, first of all, negative attitudes of the society towards erotic activities of people with disabilities.     

Finite frequency range robust iterative learning control of linear discrete system with multiple time-delays

This paper uses repetitive process stability theory to design robust iterative learning control law for linear discrete systems with multiple time-delays and polytopic uncertainty. Both dynamic and static forms of the control law are considered and used when designing robust iterative learning control schemes. Also, based on the generalized Kalman-Yakubovich-Popov Lemma, the proposed design procedures a required frequency attenuation over a finite frequency range and the monotonic trial-to-trial error convergence. Moreover, linear matrix inequality techniques are applied to formulate the convergence conditions and to obtain formulas for the control law designs. Finally, an illustrative numerical simulation example is given and concludes the paper.