Cerebral infarct in head injury: relationship to child abuse

BACKGROUND: To determine whether CT-detected cerebral infarct in young children is associated more often with abuse or unintentional head injury. METHODS: Retrospective case-control study of injured children under age 6 who had abnormal initial head CT scans and who were admitted to the only Level I pediatric trauma center in Washington State for closed head injury (CHI) from January 1, 1992 to December 31, 1998. RESULTS: Fifteen children developed cerebral infarct after CHI during the 7 year period. These cases were compared to 53 controls (those who did not develop infarct). After adjusting for the presence of SDH and for severity of injury, patients with infarcts were six times more likely to have been abused than patients without infarcts (OR 6.1; 95% CI, 1.02-36.0). CONCLUSIONS: Cerebral infarct after CHI appears to result more frequently from abuse than unintentional injury in young children.     

Phonological awareness,speech development,and letter knowledge in preschool children

Phonological awareness has been shown to be one of the most reliable predictors and associates of reading ability. In an attempt to better understand its development, we have examined the interrelations of speech skills and letter knowledge to the phonological awareness and early reading skills of 99 preschool children. We found that phoneme awareness, but not rhyme awareness, correlated with early reading measures. We further found that phoneme manipulation was closely associated with letter knowledge and with letter sound knowledge, in particular, where rhyme awareness was closely linked with speech perception and vocabulary. Phoneme judgment fell in between. The overall pattern of results is consistent with phonological representation as an important factor in the complex relationship between preschool children’s phonological awareness, their emerging knowledge of the orthography, and their developing speech skills. However, where rhyme awareness is a concomitant of speech and vocabulary development, phoneme awareness more clearly associates with the products of literacy experience.     

Writing it down—writing it out—writing it up: researching our practice through action learning

We dedicate this article to the late Professor John Morris, an appreciative inquirer into and true enabler of the writing of practice for each of us.

What value is added for writer and reader by intentionally keeping personal learning part of public researching? When a practitioner attends conscientiously to ‘the relationship with their research,’ does it make a difference to their learning and researching? If it does, can this difference also make a difference to the reader …? This paper addresses these kinds of queries from the standpoint of ‘scholarly practice,’ the research undertaken by mature managers and professionals who account in text for initiating and sustaining change within their complex contexts of work. Through exploring a variety of learning frames, the authors identify the distinctive opportunities and challenges in practice-led enquiry, and raise implications critically for the researching professional as well as for their ‘enablers’—the academic supervisors or fellow action-learning set members—who support and challenge the efforts of scholarly practitioners to make sense of and explicate their action. Revans's praxeology of action-based learning (systems alpha, beta and gamma) is extended as a research analogue for practice-led knowing. Ontological, methodological and epistemological perspectives are progressively deployed to examine critically the essentially reflexive nature of scholarly practice. The authors depict challenges in scholarly practice of establishing focus, incorporating others' thinking alongside one's own and asserting one's own voice. The paper concludes by warning of two ways in which enablers can unwittingly hijack the purpose of practice-led research.     

Patents, venture capital, and software start-ups

This paper analyzes the relation between the patenting behavior of startup firms and the progress of those firms through the venture capital cycle. Linking data relating to venture capital financing of software startup firms with data concerning the patents obtained by those firms, we find significant and robust positive correlations between patenting and several variables measuring the firm's performance (including number of rounds, total investment, exit status, receipt of late stage financing, and longevity). The data also show that (1) only about one in four venture-backed software firms acquired even one patent during the period of the study; (2) patenting practices very considerably among the sub-sectors of the software industry; and (3) the relationship between patent metrics and firm performance depends less on the size of the patent portfolio than on the firm's receipt of at least one patent.     

Maintaining Suitable Standards of Scholarship

If instruction is to command equal respect with research within academe, it must manifest the same high standards of scholarship expected of research. Journals devoted to pedagogy support this by maintaining high standards of scholarship in the articles they publish. This commentary identifies two examples of articles in Volume 1 of Computer Science Education which fail to meet even the most elementary standards of scholarship.     

Out with the old,in with the new: how changes in cricket helmet regulations affect the vision of batters

The International Cricket Council recently introduced new regulations for helmets in cricket. Amongst other changes, these regulations limit batters from adjusting the gap between the peak and the grille, resulting in some controversy over whether the new helmet design reduces visibility of the ball. This study compared the visual field of individuals when wearing an old helmet that does not conform to the new regulations, and the equivalent replacement which does. The visual field of 10 male participants was tested whilst wearing an old and new helmet. The new helmet resulted in a significant reduction in the visual field of the wearer (M = 66.1 out of 76 points seen in the new helmet vs. 74.8 seen with the old helmet), with the restriction predominantly confined to the superior visual field. The new regulations do appear to restrict the visual field of batters, confirming the anecdotal reports of players. However, the majority of this restriction occurs in the superior field, suggesting that the impact on batting performance may be limited. The importance of considering the impact that new helmet regulations can have on vision, batting performance, and player safety is discussed.     

The cognitive levels test: Its relationship with reading and mathematics achievement

Any instrument designed to measure broad cognitive ability is expected to correlate substantially with valid measures of academic achievement. This report describes an investigation designed to evaluate the relationship between the Cognitive Levels Test, a newly available instrument, and two tests of academic achievement that have been widely used for nearly two decades: the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests and the KeyMath Diagnostic Arithmetic Test. The study included children in grades K-2 who were enrolled in a remedial summer school program. The results showed the Cognitive Levels Test (Cognitive Index) to be rather highly correlated with the KeyMath Diagnostic Arithmetic Test Total score (r=.72) and moderately correlated with the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests Total Reading score (r=.55). A repeated measures analysis of variance comparing standard scores for the Cognitive Levels Test with those of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests indicated few mean differences between the two sets of scores. Implications concerning the validity of the Cognitive Levels Test were discussed.     

Introduction to special issue on morphology and the acquisition of alphabetic writing systems

Reading and Writing -     

Evidence in seconds? Format and design considerations in the provision of reliable information to support evidence‐based practice

Evidence‐based practice is gaining support amongst health professionals. However, the major barrier remains the lack of time to read the literature. There are also problems with the take‐up and use of evidence‐based information sources such as Cochrane reviews and Effective Health Care bulletins. If such evidence is to be incorporated into local guidelines and used in day‐to‐day practice, practitioners request that these and other reliable publications be further summarized in short packages and available within seconds. The Health Evidence Bulletins Wales offer a model for this approach. The Bulletins have gone through several developmental stages leading to a novel two‐column format. In the first column, brief statements summarize the best available evidence within a topic area. In the second, full details are provided of the supporting publications (and the evidence type, or research design) with links to the full text of documents, where possible from the electronic versions of each Bulletin. Results from a questionnaire study using a random sample and unsolicited feedback suggest that this ‘two‐tier’ approach to information provision is valued by users and has implications for information services currently under development to support clinical governance.