Small Picture Research Articles

Wear a Helmet! Healthy Safety Habits by M.E. Salzmann

Salzmann, Mary Elizabeth. Wear a Helmet! Healthy Safety Habits. Minneapolis, MN: Abdo Publishing, 2015, Print.This small picture book is levelled to the third or “transitional” reading level defined in the Sandcastle series. This series is designed for use in “shared, guided and independent reading and writing activities to support a balanced approach to literacy instruction”. The subject of the book is health and safety. Each photograph shows a child doing something that promotes safety: wearing a bike helmet, a life preserver or a seatbelt. Other children are shown washing hands, using a pot holder and seated at a computer to illustrate online safety. The children featured are in the 7-9 age range and are named to allow readers to relate to them more easily. Younger children will look up to older children pictured doing the right things. The text is short and very simple, designed for children who are not yet fluent readers. However, for average readers, who might pick up this book in a library, the text would be most appropriate for the lower end of the recommended age 4-9 audience. There is a brief quiz at the end of the book, aimed at a low comprehension level. Strangely, some of the definitions in the glossary contain words that are well above the reading level of the book. For example, the definition of the word “germ” includes the word “organism”. While this book is designed for reading enhancement programs, it does model useful health and safety ideas, so would be a good addition for school and public libraries.Recommendation: 3 stars out of 4Reviewer: Sean BorleSean Borle is a University of Alberta undergraduate student who is an advocate for child health and safety.

Multimedia based Real Time Traffic Sign Recognition System and its Analysis

Background/Objectives: Traffic sign recognition system is a multimedia based real time which guides and assist the driver visually with audio to decrease the road accidents. Methods/Statistical analysis: Hundreds of small pictures are registered by the regional transportation authority of every country which guides the drivers as well as road users by providing information related to current status of the road. All most in all countries red and blue color with a particular shape like triangle, circle and rectangle are used to prepare small pictorial signs. In proposed research, features of color and shape are used to detect, track and recognize traffic signs. Templates are prepared using canny images and centroid of captured sign from the video. Such templates are matched with the knowledgebase by translating images according to the centroid point of a shape. Findings: Proposed research paper introduces the traffic sign recognition system with multiple output formats like video and audio with the textual information of the tracked signs. Analysis of the developed system is focuses in this paper. Each prohibitory, obligation, cautionary and informatory signs are tested to check the robustness of the system during number of experiments. According to the analysis report more the 100 signs are tested and the performance of the proposed research is nearly 93%. Knowledgebase has been prepared for all traffic signs. Application/ Improvements: The proposed system produces more than 93% which can be improved to get exactly 100% accuracy level.

‘Something really weird has happened’: Losing the ‘big picture’ in emergency service calls

This paper is a single case analysis of an emergency service call in which the caller failed to convince the call taker that the request for service was urgent in what turned out to be a tragic event. The analysis of this call using the techniques and findings of conversation analysis reveals that the actions of both the call taker and the caller created an interactional context in which the “big picture” (the potential for danger), became repeatedly submerged in “small picture” details (such as the identity and location of the caller and her role in the situation). This paper builds on previous research on how callers can fail to construct convincing descriptions of the problem and extends this line of work by exploring how participants make or fail to make inferences in order to construct a gestalt or big picture of the event being reported, how participants manage events that unfold during the call, and how callers convey their identity and role in the situation.

G321(P) Fix freddie!

Background Facing higher than average unscheduled care use in a busy inner city paediatric unit, with a significant proportion of low acuity conditions, a need to become proactive in tackling the pressure was recognised. Collaborated as part of new innovative integrated paediatric care model with puppet company to produce Fix Freddie! Pilot tour Spring 2014. Objectives Better understanding of how local community accesses children’s unscheduled care bringing together communities and professionals across the whole system, to support families in feeling confident to navigate system and care for their children’s health needs reduce pressures on the local emergency and urgent care system Methods Explored different settings and workshop styles (Table 1). Parents/carers asked to complete a pre show questionnaire. After the show, explored issues with: small parent focus groups classroom-based discussion and picture drawing fete style event with informal conversations with professionals Feedback obtained with Post-It comments on “Freddie Feedback” poster. Information leaflet distributed with advice about where to seek advice, self management, and information about local services. Filmed to capture impact of events on children, parents and professionals. Results Pre show questionnaire Completed by 46 parents of 85 children. 53% white british; 47% diverse ethnic mix. Chart A how seek child health advice – 85% GP, 21% ED, 42% family and friends, 37% internet. Chart B services use when worried – 89% GP, 52% ED Parents most consistently worried by fever, 52% would seek GP review 41% would go to A&E. Other concerns included cough, vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pain. Attended ED and the GP with similar illnesses. 26% reported issues in accessing care, primarily lack of same day GP appointments. Key themes surfaced from Fix Freddie! Feedback (Table 2) Better understanding of local services available, notably about 111 Improved knowledge and confidence about self managing minor illnesses and injuries Additional awareness raised about safety at home General positive feedback for puppet show and events Conclusion Fix Freddie! has provided a fun and engaging way to make new connexions across the whole system, facilitating co-design of local solutions to problems of healthcare accessibility and confidence in self management. Local CCG commissioners are now funding a wider local tour and we are working on next steps to broaden reach of the events.

Auditory and visual localization accuracy in young children and adults

ObjectiveThis study aimed to measure and compare sound and light source localization ability in young children and adults who have normal hearing and normal/corrected vision in order to determine the extent to which age, type of stimuli, and stimulus order affects sound localization accuracy. MethodsTwo experiments were conducted. The first involved a group of adults only. The second involved a group of 30 children aged 3 to 5 years. Testing occurred in a sound-treated booth containing a semi-circular array of 15 loudspeakers set at 10° intervals from −70° to 70° azimuth. Each loudspeaker had a tiny light bulb and a small picture fastened underneath. Seven of the loudspeakers were used to randomly test sound and light source identification. The sound stimulus was the word “baseball”. The light stimulus was a flashing of a light bulb triggered by the digital signal of the word “baseball”. Each participant was asked to face 0° azimuth, and identify the location of the test stimulus upon presentation. Adults used a computer mouse to click on an icon; children responded by verbally naming or walking toward the picture underneath the corresponding loudspeaker or light. A mixed experimental design using repeated measures was used to determine the effect of age and stimulus type on localization accuracy in children and adults. A mixed experimental design was used to compare the effect of stimulus order (light first/last) and varying or fixed intensity sound on localization accuracy in children and adults. ResultsLocalization accuracy was significantly better for light stimuli than sound stimuli for children and adults. Children, compared to adults, showed significantly greater localization errors for audition. Three-year-old children had significantly greater sound localization errors compared to 4- and 5-year olds. Adults performed better on the sound localization task when the light localization task occurred first. ConclusionsYoung children can understand and attend to localization tasks, but show poorer localization accuracy than adults in sound localization. This may be a reflection of differences in sensory modality development and/or central processes in young children, compared to adults.

Portal venous gas detected by ultrasound examination in emergency department in a patient with acute abdominal pain

Results 82 year old woman, active and independent, who came to the ER with abdominal pain from 12 hours, which started about 2 hours after dinner. The patient presented malaise, affected by pain, hypotensive and tachycardic. Given the general malaise the patient underwent an abdominal ultrasound scan at the bedside of the patient showed many small echogenic mobile pictures that moved through the portal vein and its branches, and in the left hepatic lobe level we saw also multiple linear echogenic pictures in the portal branches with posterior acoustic shadows. Suspecting IP and gas in the abdominal venous complex portomesenteric urgent contrast CT was made, which confirmed the diagnosis. Conclusion CT and US are the most commonly used imaging modalities in patients with acute abdomen and even if CT represents the gold standard in the evaluation of patients with II. However, there are some disadvantages associated with this technique, such as radiation exposure, potential nephrotoxicity and the risk of an allergic reaction to the contrast agents. Thus, not all patients with suspected bowel ischaemia can be subjected to these examinations. Despite its limitations, bedside ultrasound performed by EP could constitutes a good imaging method as first examination in acute settings of suspected mesenteric ischemia. Ultrasonography by EP, can be a useful tool in cases with serious diseases. Incorporate ultrasound in the ER lowers overall service times, since the EP is more effective, efficient and dynamic management “time-dependent” emergency, providing greater clinical patient safety.

The Heart of Human Rights by Allen E. Buchanan (review)

Reviewed by: The Heart of Human Rights by Allen E. Buchanan Jill Stauffer, Asst Prof. (bio) Allen E. Buchanan, The Heart of Human Rights ( New York, Oxford University Press, 2013), ISBN 9780-19-932538-2, 320 pages. This is a massive book that covers so much ground that nothing of review length could do it justice, so I’ll focus on what I believe is the most interesting and fruitful aspect of the book—its assessment of whether the legal order of international human rights is, at present, capable of anything more than a diagnosis of global problems. Put otherwise, can this system to which so many look for remedies actually offer remedies, or is something more needed to fix the world’s more entrenched forms of injustice? Before we dive into that question, let us glance at the book’s broader ambitions. Allen Buchanan does a good job taking the reader through many of the dominant schools of philosophical thought about human rights, asking whether any offer adequate justification for their positions. He does justice to what each position asserts but ultimately argues for taking international human rights as a legal practice to be viewed instrumentally for its usefulness rather than as a “mirror” to any one set of original principles. Concerns that rights discourse is too individualistic are overstated, Buchanan insists, because human rights always focus on the social setting in which conditions for leading a good life must transpire. We just do live with others, and rights discourse is one way we have found to manage conflicts that inevitably arise between persons and groups. Many who argue for rights for individuals on a priori grounds of human dignity worry that any other approach threatens to sacrifice individuals to consequentialism, but Buchanan contends that one can recognize the importance of securing public goods without denying protection to individuals. He also reminds us that protecting individuals does not solve every problem of injustice, as rights regimes can coincide with systemic discrimination. One must look at the small and large pictures simultaneously in order to do justice. That is why Buchanan argues for an “ecological” view of the legitimacy of human rights legal institutions: “it is often not possible to determine the legitimacy of an institution in isolation; instead, its legitimacy may be a function of how it fits into a network of institutions.”1 If we think of the legitimacy of international human rights law in this way, the question is not only whether the United Nations Security Council, treaty-making bodies, or the International Criminal Court are legitimate, but how all these parts of the larger whole operate together to provide what constituents need and expect. And if that is how legitimacy is created, then there is also room for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in international human rights law, even though they are, as Buchanan puts it, “reliable external agents to gather and integrate the information and make it available in understandable form to relevant stakeholders.”2 So, though NGOs are external to states, and must be in order to be legitimate, that legitimacy also depends on how their [End Page 240] work serves the legitimacy of states by offering neutral judgments about states’ human rights records. The worry remains that a robust international system is not compatible with individual states’ constitutional democracies. Buchanan visits both sides of the problem and argues that, though international human rights law may modify constitutional democracies’ policies, at times without democratic authorization, the risk may not be more weighty than that posed by the kind of indeterminacy that always is part of law. He adds, however, that one should not blithely dismiss concerns about loss of self-determination when international law is not treated carefully by domestic jurisdictions. Instead of posing the problem as a false dilemma—international rights or domestic constitution—Buchanan recommends judgment: the common practice of balancing competing values. That leads us back to his main idea: human rights as they are practiced at present are largely a legal phenomenon (which means we escape the need to agree on a moral foundation for them), and the legal system created to express them may not be up to some of the...

Investigating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Triggered by the Experience of Dyslexia in Mainstream School Education?

Purpose: This paper details a study of adult dyslexics, investigating their childhoods and whether emotional trauma took place, and if this resulted in post-traumatic stress manifestations. Methods: This paper reports on a reflective qualitative/quantitative adult developmental dyslexia study of N=22 who presently or have in the past suffered from depressive disorders, and N=7 control dyslexic adults. All who replied to the recruitment adverts with a valid diagnosis were interviewed. The study compared depressive to nondepressive dyslexics, with gender and academic success variables. Interpretive Phenomenology Analysis was used to investigate dyslexia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from a qualitative perspective. Results: The study found support for previous empirical studies noting childhood trauma amongst this population, however this study went one stage further an investigated PTSD as a main topic (manifested as adults and parents). Anger and resentment towards their childhood teacher still registered as adults, along with memories of injustice at the hands of childhood educationalists. Much of this anger was at their lack of diagnosis which meant they suffered for many years as having an undiagnosed learning difficulty. Interestingly the triggers that affected them at present were smell (school cleaning materials), small pictures and small chairs; these produced high levels of anxiety, inferiority and flash-backs which made visiting school for their own children problematic, with some avoiding such situations. Conclusion: This study identified that emotional trauma took place in all participants, and this resulted in many having post-traumatic stress disorder manifestations as a result of returning to school for their own children. Participants still noted anger and resentment as adults towards their childhood teachers.

Patterns of communication in high-fidelity simulation.

High-fidelity simulation is commonplace in nursing education. However, critical thinking, decision making, and psychomotor skills scenarios are emphasized. Scenarios involving communication occur in interprofessional or intraprofessional settings. The importance of effective nurse-patient communication is reflected in statements from the American Nurses Association and Quality and Safety Education for Nurses, and in the graduate outcomes of most nursing programs. This qualitative study examined the patterns of communication observed in video recordings of a medical-surgical scenario with 71 senior students in a baccalaureate program. Thematic analysis revealed patterns of (a) focusing on tasks, (b) communicating-in-action, and (c) being therapeutic. Additional categories under the patterns included missing opportunities, viewing the "small picture," relying on informing, speaking in "medical tongues," offering choices…okay?, feeling uncomfortable, and using therapeutic techniques. The findings suggest the importance of using high-fidelity simulation to develop expertise in communication. In addition, the findings reinforce the recommendation to prioritize communication aspects of scenarios and debriefing for all simulations.

Subliminal primes for global or local processing influence judgments of vehicular traffic.

Previous studies on semantic priming show that briefly presented words can unconsciously manipulate subjects' mental states, behaviors, and attitudes. Here we evaluated whether semantic primes can also manipulate the breadth of subjects' visual attention. We primed participants with briefly presented words that indicate either broadness or narrowness; each prime was followed by either a large or a small picture of a street intersection with vehicles, and participants had to indicate in which order the vehicles were legally allowed to pass the intersection. Participants responded to large pictures faster when primed with words denoting broadness, and to small pictures faster when primed with words denoting narrowness. From this we concluded that semantic priming can be effectively applied to manipulate the breadth of attention, which could be exploited in real-world scenarios.

Small world picture of worldwide seismic events

The understanding of long-distance relations between seismic activities has for long been of interest to seismologists and geologists. In this paper we have used data from the worldwide earthquake catalog for the period between 1972 and 2011 to generate a network of sites around the world for earthquakes with magnitude m≥4.5 in the Richter scale. After the network construction, we have analyzed the results under two viewpoints. First, in contrast to previous works, which have considered just small areas, we showed that the best fitting for networks of seismic events is not a pure power law, but a power law with exponential cutoff; we also have found that the global network presents small-world properties. Second, we have found that the time intervals between successive earthquakes have a cumulative probability distribution well fitted by nontraditional functional forms. The implications of our results are significant because they seem to indicate that seisms around the world are not independent. In this paper we provide evidence to support this argument.

When given the opportunity, chimpanzees maximize personal gain rather than “level the playing field”

We provided chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) with the ability to improve the quality of food rewards they received in a dyadic test of inequity. We were interested to see if this provision influenced their responses and, if so, whether it was mediated by a social partner’s outcomes. We tested eight dyads using an exchange paradigm in which, depending on the condition, the chimpanzees were rewarded with either high-value (a grape) or low-value (a piece of celery) food rewards for each completed exchange. We included four conditions. In the first, “Different” condition, the subject received different, less-preferred, rewards than their partner for each exchange made (a test of inequity). In the “Unavailable” condition, high-value rewards were shown, but not given, to both chimpanzees prior to each exchange and the chimpanzees were rewarded equally with low-value rewards (a test of individual contrast). The final two conditions created equity. In these High-value and Low-value “Same” conditions both chimpanzees received the same food rewards for each exchange. Within each condition, the chimpanzees first completed ten trials in the Baseline Phase, in which the experimenter determined the rewards they received, and then ten trials in the Test Phase. In the Test Phase, the chimpanzees could exchange tokens through the aperture of a small wooden picture frame hung on their cage mesh in order to receive the high-value reward. Thus, in the Test Phase, the chimpanzees were provided with an opportunity to improve the quality of the rewards they received, either absolutely or relative to what their partner received. The chimpanzees responded in a targeted manner; in the Test Phase they attempted to maximize their returns in all conditions in which they had received low-value rewards during the Baseline Phase. Thus, the chimpanzees were apparently motivated to increase their reward regardless of their partners’, but they only used the mechanism provided when it afforded the opportunity for them to increase their rewards. We also found evidence that the chimpanzees’ responses were enhanced by social facilitation. Specifically, the chimpanzees were more likely to exchange their tokens through the frame when their test partner also did so, even in circumstances in which their reward value could not be improved. Our paradigm provided the chimpanzees with the possibility to improve the quality of rewards they received in the Test Phase. We found that refusals – to exchange tokens or to eat rewards – decreased significantly in the Test Phase compared to the Baseline Phase, where no such opportunity for improvement of outcomes existed. Thus, the chimpanzees participated more when they could improve the rewards they received.

“Facing the Fact: Word and Image in Muriel Rukeyser’s ‘Worlds Alongside’”

“Facing the Fact: Word and Image in Muriel Rukeyser’s ‘Worlds Alongside’”1 Catherine Gander (bio) In 1939, the small format picture magazine Coronet featured two photo-textual experiments. These were arranged as a “portfolio of photographs” supported by a poetic prose “narrative” by Muriel Rukeyser. They were published in the September and October issues, and were titled, respectively, “Adventures of Children” and “Worlds Alongside.” The photo-narratives were experimental not least in the fact that they did not adhere to established contemporary formulae regarding the presentation of word-image pairings in magazine reports, such as those featured in Life or Time since the height of the Great Depression, as well as those featured previously in the more arts-orientated Coronet. Hailed by the editors of Coronet as “infinitely superior to the usual picture-gallery treatment” of photographs and descriptive captions in the publication (120), Rukeyser’s photo-narratives nevertheless puzzled several readers, offended some, and remain an intriguing and, I argue, vital part of her oeuvre. For the purposes of this essay, which will attempt to unravel the complexity of Rukeyser’s use of word and image, tracing the aesthetic, ideological, and poetic implications of her photo-narrative work, I will dedicate my analysis to the second of the pieces, “Worlds Alongside.” Although both photo-narratives utilize the format of the picture magazine to explore dual aspects of modern life—the separate yet parallel social spheres of wealth and poverty, of civilized sophistication and primitive simplicity, for example—“Worlds [End Page 288] Alongside,” as its title would indicate, provides a richer text through which to interrogate these themes, as well as Rukeyser’s management of them. Sixteen pages in length, the photo-narratives each contain six image pairings, in which two photographs are arranged to face each other on the verso and recto of the double-page spread: one combination of four images, organized in double pairings on the same format, and two single images, one beginning and one ending the photo-narrative, the text of which runs beneath each photograph in neat, centered font. The theme of duality in “Worlds Alongside,” then, begins in its formal presentation. “Worlds living now!” opens the narrative (Figure 1), an exclamatory sentence that seems at odds with the silent tranquility of the image of verdant landscape above it. The prosperous fecundity of this portion of American existence2 is highlighted by Rukeyser’s choice of descriptors—“rich” and “fertility” (83)—which further enhance the effect of the image directly overleaf: a larger documentary photograph by Dorothea Lange of dustbowl desolation, in which the twin rudimentary and disused post-boxes indicate that this part of “the same country’s” (84) landscape cannot sustain life of any kind (Figure 2). The ornate city “tower” (85) to the right of the dustbowl image, doubled through the windowpane of the tower in which the photographer obviously stands, serves to cement the established theme of duality and difference visible in the “same” world. Exploiting what Edwin Rosskam in the same year had termed the “new unit” of communication, “the double-paged spread in which word and image complemented each other” (7), Rukeyser stages encounters between representative images of ostensibly social, cultural, or ethnic opposites. The potential for communication between these worlds resides in the ocular dialectic that Rukeyser highlights as symptomatic of the Depression era’s dependency on visuality: a self-other relation bound up in the introspection and objectification generated by the documentary gaze. For example, appearing two thirds of the way through “Worlds Alongside,” Figure 3 demonstrates the layers of meaning constructed in Rukeyser’s use of image, text, and format; more precisely, Depression-era documentary photographs (Farm Security Administration [FSA] images by Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein respectively), a textual narrative [End Page 289] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. “Worlds Alongside,” Coronet Oct. 1939, page 83, FSA photograph, photographer unknown. Reprinted courtesy of the Library of Congress. [End Page 290] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. “Worlds Alongside,” Coronet Oct. 1939, pages 84–85. FSA photograph by Dorothea Lange (left) reprinted courtesy of the Library of Congress. that both reflects and complicates the images to which it...

Intuition and consilience: The creation of clinical and symptomatic knowledge in entertainment industries

Abstract The recent tendency among scholars in the discussion of the creation of innovative knowledge emphasizes the importance of intuition over learned (or informed) decisions. This new development, however, fails to instruct us how to train decision makers to be intuitive. Furthermore, in their new catchphrase of ‘consilience’, many scholars and practitioners fail to teach us how to generate new knowledge through interdisciplinary communication. We are not even sure as to how we can establish communication among different disciplines to begin with. This article is an attempt to bridge our classical understanding of clinical and symptomatic knowledge in western philosophy with the new type of knowledge creation through consilience. I first explain the big picture of how both clinical and symptomatic knowledge is closely linked to consilience as pivotal elements of new knowledge creation. The big picture will then be applied to a small picture of the entertainment industry where consilience is used to create new box office hits like Hollywood and South Korean Hallyu cultural products.

TELEVISION DISTRIBUTION OF LOW-BUDGET INDEPENDENT FEATURES IN THE 1950S: THE CASES OF UNITED ARTISTS V. STRAND PRODUCTIONS AND EAGLE-LION CLASSICS V. BOGEAUS

TELEVISION DISTRIBUTION OF LOW-BUDGET INDEPENDENT FEATURES IN THE 1950S: THE CASES OF UNITED ARTISTS V. STRAND PRODUCTIONS AND EAGLE-LION CLASSICS V. BOGEAUS

Of Mice and Women: Beatrix Potter's Bluebeard Story, Sister Anne

Between 1902 and 1918, Beatrix Potter published twenty storybooks and two books of nursery rhymes for children. All were illustrated by Potter, all featured animal characters as protagonists, all were both popular and profitable. But it was over ten years before the author next published a storybook. During those ten years, Potter made many American friends; they wrote to her and came to visit because they admired her work, and she was attracted to them by their intelligent and well-informed appreciation of her achievements, professional interest in children’s literature having begun rather earlier in the United States than it did in Britain. 1 Under pressure from an especially enthusiastic visiting American publisher, in 1929 Potter finally revised an earlier project, The Fairy Caravan, for publication with David McKay in Philadelphia. This was a very different book from her small picture books about small animals. The Fairy Caravan is a novel-length set of stories linked by a frame narrative about a traveling circus of animals, told by a variety of different animal narrators. But although the content of The Fairy Caravan is fantastic, the settings are not. The frame story is set in the area where Potter lived, and a cock, sheep, and dogs from her own farm are among the characters.

“You are no stranger to me”

“You are no stranger to me”

The Early Nineteenth-Century Chain Testing Machines

The first large chain testing machines of the nineteenth century were introduced when the Navy Board changed from hemp anchor cables to wrought iron chain cables. They were some 100 ft (c. 33 m) in length with a capacity of about 100 tons (1 MegaNewton). Nothing seems to have been brought together about the many diverse references to these machines to paint a picture of how such anchor chains came into use and how the first proving machines were developed and used. The main protagonist in this picture is Samuel Brown, whose work on chain link suspension bridges has been well documented, together with just one or two others, namely Thomas Brunton, a merchant, and Robert Flinn, a blacksmith. Brown and Brunton set up their works near Millwall in London, while Flinn worked on the Tyne. Within a few years such machines had spread to most ports and dockyards in the country. A fairly comprehensive picture has emerged although many details will never be known. A small picture of Flinn’s machine appears on his note paper but only one scrap view has been found for each of Brown’s mechanical machine of 1814 and Brunton’s hydraulic machine of 1813.

Why School English Needs a ‘Good Enough’ Grammatics (and Not More Grammar)

At the dawn of a national curriculum for English in Australia, grammar has appeared without any serious interrogation of the terms of its re-entry and against ambiguous evidence about its value for teaching writing. What kinds of knowledge about language do teachers need in rhetorically productive teaching? This article investigates the potential of Halliday’s notion of grammatics for understanding students’ writing as acts of meaning in context. Drawing on systemic-functional linguistics, I show how teachers can assess writing achievement using ‘big picture’ tools like genre, register and ‘small picture’ tools like Expansion. I apply these tools to two student texts that call for attention to creative uses of language and to excursions and to difficulties with logic and coherence. The paper concludes that a ‘good enough’ grammatics will enable teachers to recognize playful developments in students’ texts and also to foster their control of literate discourse.

Contribution of polaron hopping to the electron paramagnetic resonance linewidth in La1−xCaxMnO3 and related materials

We analyze the contribution of polaron hopping to the electron paramagnetic resonance linewidth in La1−xCaxMnO3 and related materials. The material is assumed to be in the paramagnetic phase and the conductivity is associated with the activated polaron hopping. It is also assumed that the adiabatic, small polaron picture is appropriate so that the conductivity varies as exp[−Ea/T]/T, where Ea denotes the polaron activation energy. The polaron contribution to the linewidth is given by the expression C[χ0(T)/χ(T)]exp[−Ea/T] where χ0(T) is the Curie susceptibility (∼1/T), χ(T) is the measured susceptibility and C is a material-dependent parameter. Various experimental studies reporting polaron contributions to the linewidth are discussed. It is pointed out that fitting the linewidth to the functional form ΔH0+(A/T)exp[−Ea/T] is not physically justified. In the high temperature–mean field regime, the exchange narrowed width, (1−Θ/T)k(∞), where Θ is the paramagnetic Curie temperature, replicates the exponential functional form with reasonable values for the activation energy. From previous measurements of the conductivity that showed activated polaron hopping as the leading transport mechanism, we concluded that the linewidth in La0.7Ca0.3MnO3 is a sum of exchange narrowing and one-phonon spin–lattice terms with no evidence of a contribution from polaron hopping or band transport as had been previously proposed. A similar conclusion is reached for La0.8Ca0.2MnO3, nanometer-sized La0.9Ca0.1MnO3, and La0.9Te0.1MnO3.