Can the science of reading contribute to improving educational practices, allowing more students to become skilled readers? Much has been learned about the behavioral and brain bases of reading, how ...students learn to read, and factors that contribute to low literacy. The potential to use research findings to improve literacy outcomes is substantial but remains largely unrealized. The lack of improvement in literacy levels, especially among students who face other challenges such as poverty, has led to new pressure to incorporate the science of reading in curricula, instructional practices, and teacher education. In the interest of promoting these efforts, the authors discuss three issues that could undermine them: the need for additional translational research linking reading science to classroom activities, the oversimplified way that the science is sometimes represented in the educational context, and the fact that theories of reading have become more complex and less intuitive as the field has progressed. Addressing these concerns may allow reading science to be used more effectively and achieve greater acceptance among educators.
We investigated how gender is represented in children’s books using a novel 200,000-word corpus comprising 247 popular, contemporary books for young children. Using adult human judgments and word ...co-occurrence data, we quantified gender biases of words in individual books and in the whole corpus. We found that children’s books contain many words that adults judge as gendered. Semantic analyses based on co-occurrence data yielded word clusters related to gender stereotypes (e.g., feminine: emotions; masculine: tools). Co-occurrence data also indicated that many books instantiate gender stereotypes identified in other research (e.g., girls are better at reading, and boys are better at math). Finally, we used large-scale data to estimate the gender distribution of the audience for individual books, and we found that children are more often exposed to stereotypes for their own gender. Together, the data suggest that children’s books may be an early source of gender associations and stereotypes.
ObjectivesTo estimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cancer care services and overall (direct and indirect) excess deaths in people with cancer.MethodsWe employed near real-time weekly data ...on cancer care to determine the adverse effect of the pandemic on cancer services. We also used these data, together with national death registrations until June 2020 to model deaths, in excess of background (pre-COVID-19) mortality, in people with cancer. Background mortality risks for 24 cancers with and without COVID-19-relevant comorbidities were obtained from population-based primary care cohort (Clinical Practice Research Datalink) on 3 862 012 adults in England.ResultsDeclines in urgent referrals (median=−70.4%) and chemotherapy attendances (median=−41.5%) to a nadir (lowest point) in the pandemic were observed. By 31 May, these declines have only partially recovered; urgent referrals (median=−44.5%) and chemotherapy attendances (median=−31.2%). There were short-term excess death registrations for cancer (without COVID-19), with peak relative risk (RR) of 1.17 at week ending on 3 April. The peak RR for all-cause deaths was 2.1 from week ending on 17 April. Based on these findings and recent literature, we modelled 40% and 80% of cancer patients being affected by the pandemic in the long-term. At 40% affected, we estimated 1-year total (direct and indirect) excess deaths in people with cancer as between 7165 and 17 910, using RRs of 1.2 and 1.5, respectively, where 78% of excess deaths occured in patients with ≥1 comorbidity.ConclusionsDramatic reductions were detected in the demand for, and supply of, cancer services which have not fully recovered with lockdown easing. These may contribute, over a 1-year time horizon, to substantial excess mortality among people with cancer and multimorbidity. It is urgent to understand how the recovery of general practitioner, oncology and other hospital services might best mitigate these long-term excess mortality risks.
Many characters in written Chinese incorporate components (radicals) that provide cues to meaning. These cues are often partial, and some are misleading because they are unrelated to the character’s ...meaning. Previous studies have shown that radicals influence the reader’s processing of the characters in which they occur (e.g., Feldman and Siok in J Memory Language 40(4):559–576, 1999). We investigated whether readers automatically activate the semantic information associated with a radical even when it is irrelevant to the character’s meaning, using a modified version of the Van Orden (Memory Cogn 15(3):181–198, 1987) task with auditory semantic relatedness ratings on test items. Fifty-one Mandarin speakers participated in the study. On each trial they saw a reference category such as “animal” prior to seeing a character then indicated whether the target character was a member of that category. Decisions were slower and less accurate when a target that is not a member of the target category contained a radical that is. For example, if the category is “found in the kitchen,” the answer for the target 券 “ticket” is no; however the character contains the misleading radical 刀 “knife”. These patterns suggest that readers process the semantics of the radical even when it is not relevant to the meaning of the character. The results further verify the role of radical semantics in character processing and raise questions as to whether repetitions of experience with the idiosyncrasies of the script may result in some of the irrelevant semantics influencing the meaning of the character.
River networks are crucial in hydrologic and Earth system models. Accurately representing river networks in spatially distributed hydrologic models requires considering the model's spatial ...discretization and computational mesh. However, current methods of generating river networks for hydrologic models do not typically support unstructured meshes. Unstructured meshes offer numerous advantages over traditional, structured meshes. To overcome this limitation, we developed PyFlowline, a Python package that generates mesh-independent river networks. With PyFlowline, hydrologic modelers can generate conceptual river networks and their topological relationships for both structured and unstructured meshes.
The lexical quality (LQ) hypothesis predicts that a skilled reader's lexicon will be inhabited by a range of low- to high-quality items, and the probability of representing a word with high quality ...varies as a function of person-level, word-level, and item-specific variables. These predictions were tested with spelling accuracy as a gauge of LQ.
Item-response based crossed random effects models explored simultaneous contributions of person-level (e.g. participant's decoding skill), word-level (e.g. word's transparency rating), item-specific (e.g. participant's familiarity with specific word), and person-by-word interaction predictors (e.g. decoding by transparency rating interaction) to the spelling of 25 commonly misspelled irregular English words in 61 undergraduate university students (M = 19.4 years, 70.49% female, 39.34% Hispanic, 81.97% White).
Substantial variance among individuals in item-level spelling accuracy was accounted for by person-level decoding skill; item-specific familiarity, proportion of schwas correctly represented, and correctly identifying the word from its mispronunciation; and an interaction of transparency rating by general decoding skill.
Consistent with the LQ hypothesis, results suggest that one's ability to form a high-quality lexical representation of a given word depends on a complex combination of person-level abilities, word-level characteristics, item-specific experiences, and an interaction between person- and word-level influences.
Natural flood management (NFM) is the use of natural processes and environments to mitigate flood risk by reducing and delaying peak flood. This review introduces the concept and history of NFM and ...looks at the current state of research into the potential for using different types of woodland to fulfill the aims of NFM. Four woodland types (catchment, cross‐slope, floodplain, and riparian) are discussed with reference to studies carried out, mainly in the United Kingdom, to determine the relative merits of each type and their effectiveness in mitigating flood risk. We then discuss how trees interact with the hydrological cycle, along with a discussion of modeling methods which seek to determine the amount of water intercepted by different types of forest cover. We find that while there is some evidence that carefully planned and managed woodland can mitigate flood risk, the published data for this evidence base is somewhat sparse. This may be either due to the long timescales needed for comprehensive studies or the relative infancy of the research on NFM. More research needs to be carried out in each of the four woodland types, especially in the UK, as policy makers are increasingly looking towards nature based solutions to mitigate the potential impacts of climate change. The concept of a combined canopy/hydrological model which can be scaled from stand to watershed level and incorporate different types of woodland is suggested as it would be beneficial in guiding woodland creation policy in the future, both at the local and regional scales.
This article is categorized under:
Science of Water > Water Extremes
Water and Life > Conservation, Management, and Awareness
Woodlands are known to have a positive effect on flood mitigation, but the impact of different woodland types for natural flood management is not fully understood. We review the current state of research and suggest that improvement is needed in quantifying the effect of woodland types on catchment streamflow.
It is well established that nighttime radiance, measured from satellites, correlates with economic prosperity across the globe. In developing countries, areas with low levels of detected radiance ...generally indicate limited development - with unlit areas typically being disregarded. Here we combine satellite nighttime lights and the world settlement footprint for the year 2015 to show that 19% of the total settlement footprint of the planet had no detectable artificial radiance associated with it. The majority of unlit settlement footprints are found in Africa (39%), rising to 65% if we consider only rural settlement areas, along with numerous countries in the Middle East and Asia. Significant areas of unlit settlements are also located in some developed countries. For 49 countries spread across Africa, Asia and the Americas we are able to predict and map the wealth class obtained from ~2,400,000 geo-located households based upon the percent of unlit settlements, with an overall accuracy of 87%.
An ammonia alkaline electrolytic cell for the production of hydrogen is presented. Challenges involved in using ammonia electro-oxidation for sustainable, low-cost, high-purity hydrogen production ...are identified and solutions are proposed. Electrodeposition was selected as a technique of preparing low-loading ammonia electrocatalysts. The efficiency of the electrolytic cell was improved by using bimetallic electrodeposited catalysts (at both electrodes) containing Pt and a low concentration of secondary metals (Ru, Ir). Pt–Ir deposits showed the highest activity toward ammonia oxidation. An experimental procedure is shown which minimizes the reversible deactivation of the electrode. Significant current densities were obtained (above 100
mA
cm
−2) during electrolysis testing at relatively low metal loading, low cell voltages, and high cell efficiencies. These results point to ammonia electrolysis as a promising candidate for an alternative process for low-cost, low-temperature, high-purity hydrogen production.
Background
The neuropeptide and hormone oxytocin is known to have a significant impact on social cognition and behaviour in humans. There is growing concern regarding the influence of exogenous ...oxytocin (OT) administration in early life on later social and emotional development, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD). No study has examined offspring development in relation to the dose of exogenous oxytocin administered during labour.
Methods
Between 1989 and 1992, 2,900 mothers were recruited prior to the 18th week of pregnancy, delivering 2,868 live offspring. The Child Behaviour Checklist was used to measure offspring behavioural difficulties at ages 5, 8, 10, 14 and 17 years. Autism spectrum disorder was formally diagnosed by consensus of a team of specialists. At 20 years, offspring completed a measure of autistic‐like traits, the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Oxytocin exposure prior to birth was analysed using categorical and continuous approaches (maternal oxytocin dose) with univariate and multivariate statistical techniques.
Results
Categorical analyses of oxytocin exposure prior to birth demonstrated no group differences in any measures of child behaviour. A small in magnitude dose–response association was observed for clinically significant total behaviour symptoms (adjusted odds ratio 1.03; 95% CI: 1.01–1.06, p < .01). Exogenous oxytocin administration prior to birth was not associated with ASD (OR: 0.64; 95% CI: 0.15–2.12, p = .46) or high levels of autistic‐like traits (p = .93), as assessed by the AQ.
Conclusions
This study is the first to investigate longitudinal mental health outcomes associated with the use of oxytocin‐based medications during labour. The results do not provide evidence to support the theory that exogenous OT has a clinically significant negative impact on the long‐term mental health of children.
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