Bell Rings Research Articles

Regulating Religious Noise: The Council of Vienne, the Mosque Call and Muslim Pilgrimage in the Late Medieval Mediterranean World

AbstractThis paper examines the issue of religious noise in the later middle ages, in those areas of the western Mediterranean, especially in the Crown of Aragón, where Muslims and Christians lived in close proximity. In particular, it considers the role of the Council of Vienne (1311) in shifting and reflecting contemporary Christian attitudes toward public and audible Muslim religious observance, including the call to prayer (adhān) and local pilgrimage (ziyāra). This article will place the Vienne rulings in a wider context, first discussing the regulation of religious noise until the end of the thirteenth century, then examining data from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As will become evident, although the Council of Vienne did mark a turning point in the Christian effort to control the religious acoustic environment, its legislation was neither as original nor as effective as is often believed. Nevertheless, the Council marked a shift in contemporary thinking about religious noise, signaling increased awareness of noise as a problem and adding authority to prohibitions on public Muslim religious expression. Parallel concerns expressed by both Muslims and Christians about the religious noise and public rituals of minority communities (whether the mosque call, the ringing of bells, or local pilgrimage) demonstrate inter-religious tensions in the Mediterranean World at the turn of the fourteenth century.

A Silver Dish

A Silver Dish Joanne Koch (bio) Adapted with the author's permission from the short story. "A Silver Dish" © 1978 by Saul Bellow. All rights reserved. "The Old System" © 1967 by Saul Bellow. All rights reserved. Stage adaptations by Joanne Koch and Sarah Blacher Cohen. Presented with "The Old System," adapted by Sarah Blacher Cohen, as "Saul Bellow's Stories on Stage" as a staged reading directed by Byrne Piven at the Chicago Writers' Bloc New Play Festival with support from the Dramatists Guild Fund, Inc. in 1996; at the New York State Writer's Institute, University at Albany, 1994; at the Barbara Streisand Festival in San Diego in 1995; as a staged reading at the Florida Atlantic University Library Series in 2000; at The Egg Center For the Performing Arts in Albany, New York, in a memorial performance directed by Rebecca Kaplan and sponsored by SUNY Hillel in 2005; as a staged reading at the Spertus Institute in Chicago and at the Milwaukee Public Library in 2005, both presentations directed by Sandy Shinner. CAST OF CHARACTERS WOODY SELBST………………………………expansive, likeable man of sixty YOUNG WOODY……………………………teenager shuttling between sex and the seminary MRS. SKOGLUND……………………………wealthy, Swedish widow, once a cook WOODY'S MOTHER………………………………English woman with Victorian airs (doubles as NURSING MOTHER at the fair) [End Page 202] POP……………………………………………loveable con man, zesty, crude, unpretentious REVEREND DOCTOR KOVNER…………a Polish Pat Robertson (doubles as FARMER) WOODY'S AUNT REBECCA………………suspicious, smart wife of Rev. Kovner (doubles as OLD PROSTITUTE, MAID HJORDIS) TIME: 1980 & 1932 PLACE: Chicago Note on accents: Woody's mother and Aunt Rebecca were born and raised in England. Woody's father was born and raised in Russia, spent his adolescence in Liverpool and has since hung out in pool halls and betting parlors in Chicago. Reverend Kovner has Polish accent, suggested by the "v" for "w." Mrs. Skoglund came from Sweden as a young girl and retains her accent. Suggestions of these rhythms, rather than any attempt to simulate thick accents works best. WOODY SELBST, a man of about sixty, a warm teddy bear of a guy, paces in a hospital waiting room, pauses to look out a window, listening to the distant sound of church bells. Woody (to audience) I can't go back to Pop's room just yet. For weeks now, every time I see him, I think, this could be the last time. What can I do? SOUND OF CHURCH BELLS RINGING What do you do about death? Be realistic. There's not much you can do. We're not much better at dealing with it than, well, water buffaloes, like the ones I watched in Africa. I'm a tile contractor with plenty of responsibility, believe me—a wife here, a mistress there, a mother, two sisters that don't exactly play with a full deck… and a father who may not last out the day. (He casts a somber glance back to the window.) But once a year, I get away. I go far—Japan, Mexico, Africa. It was on a launch near the Murchison Falls in Uganda, I saw a buffalo calf seized by a crocodile from the bank of the White Nile. (He gets into the telling of the story, moving downstage.) There were giraffes along the river, and hippopotamuses, and baboons and flamingos and other brilliant birds crossing the bright air in the heat of the morning, when the calf, stepping into the river to drink, was grabbed by the hoof and dragged down. The parent buffaloes couldn't figure it out. Under the water [End Page 203] the calf still thrashed, fought, churned the mud. It looked to me as if the parents were asking each other dumbly what had happened. They were just animals, but I believe they felt grief. SOUND OF CHURCH BELLS RINGING Woody (listening for a moment) Sunday… Bells. I have plenty of connections with bells and churches. Technically, I was born a Jew, but when I was still a kid our whole family—except for Pop—was converted by my uncle, the Reverend Doctor Kovner. Kovner had gone to the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, but then, I guess he got...

Classroom Crucifixes, Teacher Headscarves, Faith Healers and More - The German Experience of Religious Freedom Under a Bill of Rights

As part of the current debate in Australia on the adoption of a bill or charter of rights, the experience of other countries is informative. The German Constitution contains a comprehensive catalogue of rights and freedoms. This includes principles protecting religious freedom, most importantly article 4, which declares ‘inviolable’ the ‘freedom of faith, of conscience, and freedom to profess a religion or a particular philosophy’. It also guarantees the ‘undisturbed practice of religion’. Should Australia opt to adopt a charter of rights in any form, it is highly likely that this instrument will contain some protection of cultural and religious freedom. While initially an Australian charter would not be constitutionally entrenched, a comparison with Germany is still helpful because it can be expected that issues encountered under a constitutional charter also arise under a legislative one. The German experience provides examples of the type of social controversies which the courts are called on to decide in relation to the protection of religious freedom. Issues encountered in Germany seem to belong to two broad categories: first, which kind of behaviour falls within the ambit of freedom of religion and, secondly, to what degree can religious freedom be limited. In relation to the first category, it appears uncontroversial that practices such as praying, conducting Sunday service or ringing of church bells constitute religious behaviour. But what about announcing a charitable drive to collect second hand goods from the pulpit; selling food or drink at religious meetings or refusing to bury an urn in a cemetery? In relation to the second category, even if a type of behaviour is found to be within the definition of freedom of belief, there must be limitations to this freedom. But where should the line be drawn? In the last few decades, the German Constitutional Court was called upon to rule on controversies where one party’s freedom to exercise his or her religion infringed another party’s freedom not to be exposed to religion or religious practices. Many of these occurred within the educational system. Famous examples are the School Prayer Case, where a student’s parents objected to their child’s exposure to school prayer outside of religious education; the Classroom Crucifix Case, where non-Christian parents objected to their child being exposed to crucifixes in classrooms of a public, non-religious school; and the Teacher Headscarf Case where the Court was asked to decide whether an Islamic teacher is entitled to wear a headscarf while teaching in a public school, thus exposing students to a manifestation of her faith. All of these cases saw the Constitutional Court become involved in morally highly controversial disputes, which received a lot of attention from the public and where public opinion was clearly divided. This paper will explain the course which the Court took in resolving these disputes. It will argue that a clause protecting freedom of belief in a charter of rights inevitably involves the courts in disputes which are morally difficult, highly controversial and the subject of much public debate. However, in my view, this is a small price to pay for providing protection of the public’s religious beliefs in a charter of rights.

Lightest Lights Against Darkest Darks

When I opened my locker the first day of junior high, I found a bra hanging from the coat hook, its assertive cups the grayish drab of whites washed too often with darks. I shut the door before anyone saw. Most of the white families left the district when busing began, but my parents stayed, so I came in with the busload of southeast Denver kids that were shipped a half-hour north to Cole Middle School to mix things up every day. The locker partner assignments were meant to encourage cross-town friendships, but that was hard with kids who wouldn't see each other after the bell rang. According to the slip of paper my homeroom teacher had given me, my locker partner was named Arika, and as I studied the combination, trying to memorize it, she brushed past me, flanked by two chattering friends. She opened the locker, snatched the bra out, and stuffed it in her backpack like she didn't care who saw. Hi, I said, too quiet for her to hear. That morning I'd worn a red bandana through the belt loops of my jeans, a fashion statement I'd seen in Seventeen. An eighth grader who caught the bus at the same stop convinced me to take it off. To make me feel better, the eighth grader said that another kid had worn British Knights sneakers to the bus stop and ended up going home when she told him that those were Crip shoes, bk for Blood Killer. As I thought of the bandana, balled in the bottom of my backpack, I hesitated, and Arika walked off without acknowledging me. I placed a few books on the locker's lower shelf, hoping she wouldn't mind if I claimed that as my own. A guy wearing sagging jeans and a pick in his hair did a slow, stylized walk down the hall, taking wide steps with a hitch in them, shaking his right hand as if he were shooting dice. Across the hall, a boom box wedged in a locker blared a booming baritone: How low can you go? Death row, what a brother knows. A teacher lingered in a doorway nearby, and I waited for her to put a

Colonialism, Capitalism and Nationalism in the US Navy's Expulsion of Guam's Spanish Catholic Priests, 1898–1900

In August 1899, US Naval and Marine forces arrived on Guam to establish an American military government that would replace more than two centuries of Spanish colonial rule. Within the first month of Captain Richard Leary's term as naval governor, he directed a number of decisive actions specifically against the Roman Catholic Church. These included a ban on the annual celebration of village fiestas, a prohibition on the ringing of church bells and, most dramatically, the expulsion of the island's Spanish priests. While the existing scholarship interprets these events as political actions to establish a uniquely American governmental system that enforces the separation of Church and State, this paper interrogates an additional array of intersecting economic and cultural issues to tell a story about some of the desires and anxieties regarding colonialism, capitalism, and nationalism in the Pacific.

After the Bell Rings: Student Perceptions of After-School

Background/Context Research on after-school programs has traditionally focused on those programs serving students in younger grades but found positive correlations between student participation in enriching after-school activities and school engagement. For older students, particularly teenagers, there tends to be lower participation. Research has also shown that students learn at different rates and need different amounts of time with the same material. School-based after-school programs have been one policy intervention to address this need. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study sought to understand better why students in one New York City high school attended after-school sessions and what kept them coming. Who does not attend, and why not? Finally, was the time after school being used in a way that most benefited students? How might the insights of those students who did attend push educators to improve after-school programming, both in terms of the teaching and in terms of how we structure these sessions? Setting This study took place in a small public New York City high school with almost all students participating in the federal free and reduced lunch program. Research Design In this action research study conducted with her own students in her own classroom, the author sought to use student perceptions to make programmatic changes that ultimately benefited the students attending the program. Through surveys, exit slips, interviews, and journal entries, the author collected student opinions and perceptions of the school's after-school program and changed the structure of her after-school sessions to maximize both attendance and student outcomes. Data Collection and Analysis The data suggest that a loosely structured and flexible program with varied types of help and, most important, individual attention is an after-school model that appears to appeal to high school students, particularly in the upper grades. Teenagers need to feel that they get something out of attending. It is critical to have the support of school administrators who understand that attendance figures alone do not reflect “success.” Students reported frustration when they were unable to get help after school because the teacher or peer tutors were overextended. The author recommends that policy makers focus on the quality of service, instead of the quantity served, to create and maintain successful interventions for all students.

Revisiting Adult Learning Theory through the Lens of an Adult Learner

In reading the last section of hour primary text, Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide by Merriam, Caffarella, and Baumgartner (2007) in my Adult Learning and Development class, I continued to feel as though I was being self-assured of my previous learning experiences once again. The final section of the text focused on basic psychological concepts and theories that I had become familiar with while completing my undergraduate degree. However, our text highlighted the tangential relationships between these psychological concepts and adult learning theory. These relationships led me to ask myself: * What discoveries [from the reading] relate to my personal development? * What about the content surprises me? * If necessary, how would I use this information as presented in the readings particularly in my current occupational position? The first chapter of our text focuses on traditional learning theories. Upon first reading, I felt as if I was reading a psychology text, and I guess, in fact, I was. The text discusses five different theories, or as the authors put it, orientations, to learning: behaviorist, humanist, cognitivist, social cognitive, and constructivist. The behaviorist theory is basically a theory that focuses on how the environment helps to shape the learning processes of an individual. When I think of this approach, I most often think of the famous Pavlov dog experiment. I grew to know this response as classical conditioning, and, in many respects, this seems to be the most prevalent teaching model in the practice today. Let's take my high school memories for example, although it has been more than 18 years since my high school graduation. What I remember most from this period of my life is the school bell. As a matter of fact, from my earliest memories, the school bell was an essential part of my public school education. When the bell rang, we knew that we either needed to be in class, moving to another class, or being dismissed for the day. While the bell didn't signify any sort of learning response, it did entrench in every student a behavior--a conditioning--on how to act and what to expect within the next few moments. For many of us the anticipation of the bell led to a heightened anxiety level since we knew that just on the other side of the bell was the dreaded AP history class, or for others, the worrisome gym class, but in that way, we were all Pavlov's dogs. Another example of this theory of learning is the way in which a teacher would set up and decorate the classroom. It was every hope of our French teacher that with each picture of Paris or any other miscellaneous Francophone city or country placed on the classroom wall, our desire to learn the language would be that much more heightened. I remember the same with my science classes, my history classes, and virtually every other class that I can remember. So, in many ways, our teachers were trying to change our behavior in respect to a certain subject, and for many of us, this worked just fine. Our text cites Skinner (1971) as saying that the ultimate goal of education is to bring about behavior that will ensure survival of the human species, societies, and individuals (p. 280). But is this really learning? I would challenge this statement by saying no. I would consider this just to be survival. But then again, we would need to define learning, which, I quickly understand, can be just about anything to any one person. In short, the behaviorist theory treats the individual as a subject that is completely reliant on its environmental surroundings. The next theory that was discussed was the humanist theory of learning. This theory establishes the perspective that an individual has the potential to grow, and further, has the desire to grow. This theory points to the fact that people strive to be the best that they can be--a similar message to what the Army would like you to believe. Merriam et al. …

Remote, aerial, translayer, nonlinear downlink underwater acoustic communication.

The nonlinear mechanism for optical to acoustic energy conversion is explored for optoacoustic communication from an in-air platform to a submerged platform. This downlink communication can provide a bell ringer function and transmission of text and data. The nonlinear conversion mechanism, also known as the nonlinear optoacoustic regime where focused laser energy is converted to sound at the air-water interface, involves a phase change of the water medium through evaporation and vaporization leading to plasma production. The nonlinear conversion mechanism provides a more efficient, i.e., higher source level, controllable method for producing underwater acoustic signals. A means of deterministically controlling the spectrum of the underwater acoustic signal has been investigated and demonstrated by varying the laser-pulse repetition rate to provide M-ary frequency shift keyed signaling. This physics-based conversion process provides a methodology for providing low probability of intercept signals whose information is embedded in noiselike signals. These laser generated signals can then be used in a frequency hopped spread spectrum technique with the use of the proper receiver structures to take advantage of the frequency diversity and periodicity inherent in this type of signal structure that could also be used to combat frequency selective fading in underwater acoustic channels.

Teaching Taxonomy: How Many Kingdoms?

A group of high school students sit in the school hallway cramming for a biology quiz. The bell rings; the students shove notes and textbooks into their bags and rush off to class. The quiz is on biological classification. Depending on the textbook, the teachers, and the state curriculum, these students learned to classify all live beings into three, or five, or six major groups, called either or domains. Taxonomy, the identification, naming, and classification of living things, is an indispensable unit in any biology curriculum and indeed, an integral part of biological science. Taxonomy catalogues life's diversity and is an essential tool for communication. But it is more than that. Scientists endeavor to construct phylogenies, diagrams that, like family trees, show relationships among organisms through ancestral lineages. Thus modern classification systems are hypotheses about the genetic relationships among species and the evolutionary history of life. Taxonomy is an especially dynamic field today. New molecular data, primarily DNA sequences, are available for an ever-increasing number of organisms. It appears that, as Emile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling predicted in 1965, molecules really are documents of evolutionary history. DNA sequences offer a way to quantify genetic similarity. Because DNA is universal, sequence data shed new light on evolutionary relationships, not only within esoteric groups of microbes but across the entire realm of life. The goal of a unified phylogeny appears within reach. New Science, Old Standards Where new data and interpretations outpace curricula, science teachers enjoy exciting opportunities to share cuttingedge research with students. But frustrating dilemmas arise: How should new information be incorporated into the framework of existing educational standards and materials? The committees that write state and national standards, authors of textbooks, and curriculum developers must also make decisions about how best to handle new developments. The National Science Education Standards address taxonomy for grades 9-12 as follows: Biological classifications are based on how organisms are related. Organisms are classified into a hierarchy of groups and subgroups based on similarities which reflect their evolutionary relationships. Species is the most fundamental unit of classification. National Research Council, 1996 This standard describes the fundamental principles of biological classification without mentioning specific taxonomic systems. Many teachers, however, also answer to state or local standards. Since 1996, I've observed several revisions in my state's standards, the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks, which reflect the inherent difficulty in mandating what students should know in fields where methodologies and interpretations are controversial. Massachusetts has continually revised the expectations for student learning in biological classification, especially with regard to the number and kind of major categories of life. Presented below are the 2001 and 2006 high school life science learning standards for this topic. In 2001, students were expected to be able to how the taxonomic system classifies living things into domains (eubacteria, archaebacteria, and eukaryotes) and kingdoms (animals, plants, fungi, etc.). The standard includes an additional note: There is an ongoing scientific debate about the number of kingdoms and which organisms should be included in each. The following websites provide more information: Brave New Biosphere--whyfiles.org/022critters/phylogeny. html and The Tree of Life Project Root Page--phylogeny. arizona.edu/tree/life.html. As of 2006, Massachusetts students are required to use cellular evidence (e.g., cell structure, cell number, cell reproduction) and modes of nutrition to describe the six kingdoms (Archaebacteria, Eubacteria, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, Animalia). …

Updating Hearing Screening Practices in Early Childhood Settings

Each day in the life of a young child with an undetected hearing loss is a day without full access to language. When hearing loss goes undetected, the resulting language deficits can become overwhelming obstacles to literacy, educational achievement, socialization, and school readiness. Several national programs such as Head Start, Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment (EPSDT), and Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act have demonstrated a commitment to providing hearing screening for young children. These programs have typically had to rely on subjective hearing screening methods. Otoacoustic emissions (OAE) technology, used widely in hospital-based newborn screening programs, is beginning to be recognized as a more practical and effective alternative when screening children birth to three years of age. Effective use of OAE screening technology in early childhood settings is contingent upon consultation from an experienced pediatric audiologist, the selection of OAE equipment demonstrated to be effective for screening children between birth and three years of age, adherence to an appropriate screening and follow-up protocol, and access to training and followup technical assistance. When these elements are present, children with a wide range of hearing health conditions can be identified in a timely manner. Several national programs such as Head Start, Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment (EPSDT), and Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act have demonstrated a commitment to providing hearing screening for young children. These programs have typically had to rely on subjective hearing screening methods including health-care provider reports indicating that ears were “checked,” observations of the child’s behavioral response to sound (such as hand clapping or bell ringing), parent perceptions of the child’s behavior, or prior documentation of newborn hearing screening outcomes (Munoz, 2003). Otoacoustic emissions (OAE) technology, used widely in hospital-based newborn screening programs and validated by professional organizations as an objective and reliable screening method (Joint Committee on Infant Hearing, 2000), is beginning to be recognized as a more practical and effective alternative when screening children birth to three years of age. How many infants and young children have a hearing loss? In the United States, approximately 1 out of every 300 children is born with a permanent hearing loss, making it the most common birth defect in the country (White, 1996). Advances in technology have now made it possible to screen newborns for hearing loss and over the past 10 years, the percentage of infants screened at birth has increased from 3% to over 90% (White, 2004). While universal in concept, however, approximately 10% of newborns do not receive a hearing screening and in some states 50% or more of the infants who do not pass newborn hearing screening are lost to follow-up before receiving the additional screening, diagnostic assessment, or early intervention services they need (Centers for Disease Control, 2005). In addition, not all hearing loss can be identified at birth because a child can lose his or her hearing at any point in early childhood. It is estimated that by school age, approximately 3 out of every 300 students have a permanent hearing loss (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 1993). Finally, it is estimated that 35% of preschoolers will have repeated episodes of ear infections, usually accompanied by a temporary hearing loss, that can also disrupt the language learning process (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2004). Hence, early childhood hearing screening programs are critical for identifying a range of hearing-health conditions that can impede development for many children.

Try Anything

Try Anything Todd Carmody and Heather K. Love Conference Review “Anxiety, Urgency, Outrage, Hope... A Conference on Political Feeling.” Franke Institute for the Humanities, University of Chicago, October 19–20, 2007 A scene in Beatriz Santiago Muñoz’s 2002 video, Fábrica Inútil (Useless Factory), stages what might be called a (p)reenactment. Workers in a Puerto Rican packaging plant are summoned to a meeting on the shop floor, where they fidget nervously as management issues pink slips and heartfelt regrets—“This is hard on everyone.” There is nothing left to do: orders are down, the other factory’s productivity is up, and the labor department has already scheduled a resumé workshop. Professional and concisely compassionate, the supervisors make the announcement as if reading from a teleprompter. The employees respond with appropriate questions (“Will we reopen in the spring?”) and appropriate sentiments (“And me? I’ve been with the company for eight years!”). Nothing in this emotional exchange seems to surprise the participants. But it is not real either—at least not yet. Fábrica Inútil is a faux documentary, with the actors employees of Flexible Packaging in Las Piedras who have agreed somewhat reluctantly to improvise this uncomfortable scene for Santiago Muñoz’s camera. This memorial to past layoffs is also a dress rehearsal for what may very well lie ahead, since job instability is par for the course. What is striking about the performance is how unimprovised it feels: everyone knows the script, as if this were a fire drill or a safety inspection. At the same time, this depressing outtake from the [End Page 133] Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 134] Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, stills from Fábrica Inútil (Useless Factory) (2002). Used with permission. [End Page 135] neoliberal workplace also hints at something bleaker. It suggests that in the face of global capital, traditional modes of left protest have become mere routine. Where past failures are destined to be endlessly (p)reenacted, the good fight can only be faked. Other moments in Fábrica Inútil are more utopian: in addition to the fake firing, Santiago Muñoz orchestrates a series of scenes that depart from the script of life in the factory. In the opening sequence, for example, workers gather outside to watch the sunrise while the first two work bells ring; for a moment, at least, the factory is useless. In another scene, workers wrestle each other with cheerful WWF bravado, rolling around on the blue foam chips that the company produces. In these scenes, both dramatic and mundanely repetitive, Santiago Muñoz explores the affective conditions of life in the time of global capital. The video considers the political exhaustion of the contemporary moment—dead-end jobs, ineffectual protest—and gestures toward other ways of being. The fact that these alternatives can look merely silly indicates how far we are from collective social transformation, but it also suggests that we might be willing to try anything—however awkward—to make it happen. Political despair, the detritus of the everyday, new forms of protest, and collective dreaming: such are the concerns of the Public Feelings project, which organized the conference“Anxiety,Urgency,Outrage, Hope . . . A Conference on Political Feeling” at the University of Chicago in October 2007, during which Fábrica Inútil was screened.1 The Public Feelings project is an ongoing collaboration between scholars, artists, and activists that can be understood as part of the recent “turn to affect” in the humanities and the social sciences.2 With roots in feminism, Marxist cultural theory, ethnic studies, and queer studies, Public Feelings begins with the assumption that paying attention to the tone and texture of social oppression as lived experience is as necessary as more systematic and systemic modes of critique. Although emotion can be understood as the least public or political dimension of human experience, critics such as Lauren Berlant, Ann Cvetkovich, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, José Esteban Muñoz, Sara Ahmed, Kathleen Stewart, Fred Moten, David Eng, and Lisa Duggan have...

TheArabidopsisBEL1-LIKE HOMEODOMAIN Proteins SAW1 and SAW2 Act Redundantly to RegulateKNOXExpression Spatially in Leaf Margins

In Arabidopsis thaliana, the BEL1-like TALE homeodomain protein family consists of 13 members that form heterodimeric complexes with the Class 1 KNOX TALE homeodomain proteins, including SHOOTMERISTEMLESS (STM) and BREVIPEDICELLUS (BP). The BEL1-like protein BELLRINGER (BLR) functions together with STM and BP in the shoot apex to regulate meristem identity and function and to promote correct shoot architecture. We have characterized two additional BEL1-LIKE HOMEODOMAIN (BLH) proteins, SAWTOOTH1 (BLH2/SAW1) and SAWTOOTH2 (BLH4/SAW2) that, in contrast with BLR, are expressed in lateral organs and negatively regulate BP expression. saw1 and saw2 single mutants have no obvious phenotype, but the saw1 saw2 double mutant has increased leaf serrations and revolute margins, indicating that SAW1 and SAW2 act redundantly to limit leaf margin growth. Consistent with this hypothesis, overexpression of SAW1 suppresses overall growth of the plant shoot. BP is ectopically expressed in the leaf serrations of saw1 saw2 double mutants. Ectopic expression of Class 1 KNOX genes in leaves has been observed previously in loss-of-function mutants of ASYMMETRIC LEAVES (AS1). Overexpression of SAW1 in an as1 mutant suppresses the as1 leaf phenotype and reduces ectopic BP leaf expression. Taken together, our data suggest that BLH2/SAW1 and BLH4/SAW2 establish leaf shape by repressing growth in specific subdomains of the leaf at least in part by repressing expression of one or more of the KNOX genes.

Talking Mathematics

Discussion fills the room as the bell rings. Scanning the classroom, the teacher takes in the faces of twenty-one third graders. Eleven African-American, three Hispanic, five Asian, and two Middle Eastern children prepare for the day. Of these twenty-one students, three live with someone other than their parents, five live in a single-parent home, eleven live in homes in which English is a second language, four receive special education services, and more than half qualify to receive a free or reduced school lunch. Their teacher smiles and prepares for mathematics workshop, already posing questions.

Assessing Adolescents Who Threaten Homicide in Schools: A Recent Update

Our paper, following this update on the problem of adolescents who threaten homicide in schools, published in 2002, remains relevant to contemporary discussions of how such problems might be managed. While new five years ago, the ideas expressed in this paper have become widely accepted today. It is by now recognized, for example, that individual psychiatric assessment of a student who is thought to be potentially homicidal, or at least violent to his fellow classmates, is not enough. There also needs to be a clear assessment of the school climate, involvement of law enforcement if medium or high threat, the student’s family and a detailed analysis of the computer the student may have used, to examine Internet activity, ranging from websites frequented to online relationships developed via chat rooms. Since this paper was written, a great deal also has been learned about cyber-bullying. The Internet has become a major new tool for bullying, allowing children to intensify their bullying in various virtual environments and modes of communication. These virtual modes provide a shield of sorts, perhaps empowering the student to say things he would not normally say to someone face to face; this has increased the vitriol of the bullying and has lead to several suicides. We dedicated our Peaceful Schools project to a victim of one such cyber-bullying death. He hanged himself after receiving a relentless stream of threatening instant messages The media of course follows angles that will get readers and viewers. While tragic events such as these suicides received scant media attention, perhaps due to the unwritten media taboo on reporting on suicide. Sexier, as the media might put it, angles on bullying were reported with some zeal There was a fair amount of coverage of the release of a new anti-bullying video game called ‘‘Bully,’’ published by Rockstar Games in October 2006, a game labeled by one attorney (Houston Press, Nov 30–Dec 6, 2006, pp 27–28) as the ‘‘Columbine simulator’’ and legal attempts were made to block the sale of it. Set in the fictional boarding school Bullworth Academy, the game is not particularly shocking: there is no blood, no killing, no automatic weapons. But the protagonist employs negativity, physical violence and trickery to gain control of school bullies. So a sort of bully-at-heart protects the weaker children, a perverse morality tale in many ways. The boy who has a soft spot for losers and geeks and anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of bullying, takes up for them in a variety of violent interactions. He also becomes a sort of makeshift private eye, doing such surveillance work as photographing girls in the act of cheating on their boyfriends. When the final bell rings the bully rewards altruism and punishes other bullies. He is really a bullying non-bully, a role many of us adopt in the adult world. There has also been further research on Columbine, as the diaries of Klebold and Harris were recently made public. The research suggests that both were strongly influenced by first-person shooter video games, including ‘‘Doom’’ and ‘‘Quake.’’ Some have pointed out that their interest approached an addiction. Their parents restricted their computer use after a criminal trespass indictment suggesting that this restriction may have precipitated the immediate attack on Columbine, by denying the ‘‘drug’’ and the sublimatory outlet it provided. S. W. Twemlow Menninger Department Psychiatry, Baylor College Medicine, 2801, Gessner Drive, P.O. 809045, Houston, TX 77280-9045, USA

Bad Days Don't End When the School Bell Rings: The Lingering Effects of Negative School Events on Children's Mood, Self‐esteem, and Perceptions of Parent–Child Interaction

AbstractEach day for five days, 79 fifth‐grade children reported on events that occurred at school and they and their parents described their interactions with each other each evening. Consistent with previous research, it was found that on days when children reported more academic or peer problems during the day at school, they later described more aversive interactions with their parents. As hypothesized, increases in anxiety and drops in children's state self‐esteem partially mediated this link. However, parents did not report any differences in their interactions with the target child on days when the child experienced problems at school. This study suggests that negative events experienced by children while at school lead to short‐term changes in mood and self‐esteem, which influence their perceptions of subsequent interactions at home with parents.

Value of Urinary Flow Patterns in the Follow-Up of Children Who Underwent Snodgrass Operation

The urinary flow patterns and the Toguri nomogram were compared in the intermediate functional results of the tubularized-incised plate urethroplasty (TIPU) to repair distal and midpenile hypospadias by using uroflowmetry. 28 children who were toilet trained, were able to void volitionally, and had no fistulas following hypospadias repair were eligible for the study. The study did not include children who had persistent fistula, meatal stenosis or urethral stricture, and did not return for follow-up. The mean age was 8.4 years and the mean follow-up period was 18 months. The urinary flow pattern, maximum (Q_max) and average flow rate (Q_ave) were measured; the results were expressed as percentiles and compared to the Toguri values from normal children. The Q_max and Q_ave were considered normal if they were in >25th percentile, equivocally obstructed in the 5–25th percentile and obstructed if <5th percentile. The flow pattern was classified as bell ring shape, plateau or intermittent. According to the Toguri nomogram, 22 of 28 patients (78.5%) were considered normal, 4 patients (14.2%) as equivocally obstructed, and 2 patients (7.1%) as obstructed group. A normal bell-shaped flow curve was obtained in 23 (82.1%) of the children. 4 patients (14.2%) had a plateau flow pattern. Only 1 of the patients had an intermittent shape flow curve. The flow pattern was normal bell-shaped for all of the patients, except 1, with Q_max above the 25th percentile according to the Toguri nomogram. Of children with Q_max below the 5th percentile, both of them had a plateau flow pattern and were found to have an asymptomatic meatal stenosis, which was improved with urethral dilatation. However, of the 4 patients with Q_max between 5 and 25 percentiles, 2 had a plateau flow pattern and the others had a bell-shaped flow pattern. The flow patterns of the 2 patients determined as obstructive by the Toguri nomogram were plateau-shaped. TIPU provides satisfactory functional results for distal and midpenile hypospadias; uroflowmetry is an important noninvasive tool to evaluate this technique. There are no studies in the literature which only used flow patterns for the evaluation of urination for follow-up after the hypospadias repair. Our study showed that the evaluation of obstruction according to the Toguri nomogram may not be necessary in patients with a normal bell-shaped flow pattern in uroflowmetry.

Writing in English in Malaysian High Schools: The Discourse of Examinations

English is taught as a second language and compulsory subject in Malaysian secondary schools. Writing is one of the four language skills taught and tested. At the upper secondary school level, students write a variety of text types, most of which conform to examination genres. Given a learning context that is examination-driven and teacher-centred, how do students accomplish their writing tasks in a non-negotiable writing curriculum? Embedding the classroom in a larger social and cultural context, this study demonstrates how some students responded to teacher instructions such as ‘read, understand, interpret, do’ and ‘I want all your papers when the bell rings’. Data were taken from student interviews, teacher interviews, students' written products and classroom observations of writing lessons over the second half of the school year. Findings from the study show that the students' focus on acceptable writing for school and examination purposes did not encourage them to develop their writing skills beyond these requirements, but to adopt a range of pragmatic and expedient tactics.

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Neural Substrates of Being in the Right Place at the Right Time. Focus on “How Prior Reward Experience Biases Exploratory Movements: A Probabilistic Model”

We are all familiar with Pavlov's dogs that salivate when the dinner bell rings or Skinner's pigeons that learn that a peck on a key yields a delicious treat. But what about learning that is not focused on specific predictive cues or particular instrumental behaviors? What about the more amorphous

Medics who mentor

The school bell rings, shaking the corridor, and I'm 13 again. The excitement at the thought of going home is accompanied by a dread at the thought of maths next. An anticipatory tummy rumble cries for lunch break. But I'm not 13, and fortunately I'll never have maths again. I'm 21 and about to meet a 14 year old girl who wants to find out more about doing medicine. No I'm not a sadist; I'm a mentor for teenagers who want a career in health care. It's part of a scheme to widen participation. The teenagers, affectionately called mentees, have to fulfil a …

Alarm bells ring with broadsheet warning

A POPULAR MUSIC act once used the phrase ‘Modern life is rubbish’ as the title of their sophomore album. Th e more I read about early years education in the newspapers these days – both tabloid and broadsheets, including the not-so-broad – the more you would be inclined to agree. A couple of months ago, a letter appeared in The Daily Telegraph that warned of a potent cocktail of volatile infl uences, in this modern world, that were causing our children untold damage.