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This paper investigates the concept of word in adults at various literacy levels. Sixty adults gave definitions of word and judged whether specific items were words, during an interview of metalinguistic awareness. Definitions were analysed in terms of 3 main dimensions: functions, meaning and units. Definitional form was also noted, as were inaccuracies and misunderstandings of terminology. Differences according to literacy level were less striking than expected from the literature. However, higher readers gave more elaborated references to units and fewer references to written functions. They more often approximated the ideal form in their definitions. The definitions given by adults in this study were compared with data reported for children and this comparison was used to critique the developmental theory put forward by Papandropoulou and Sinclair (1974) . All levels of response found among children were also present in our data and there was no evidence for a qualitatively different adult response type. This suggests that factors other than development affect definitions of word and the possible roles of literacy, schooling and popular usage are discussed.

The early strife between Christianity and Paganism has recently been reflected in a prolix discussion of Survivals. The Church is accused of sheltering Paganism in her rites and tenets by disguising beathen practices and beliefs under Christian forms, while the vindicators of an independent Christianity reject as false or inadequate the analogies drawn in support of this accusation. The aim of the present paper is to examine one section of these analogies, that is, those which are founded on resemblances between the names of saints and of pagan deities.

A new method for evaluation of sperm morphology using strict criteria is currently used in the andrology laboratory at the Eastern Virginia Medical School. A prospective study was designed to evaluate the following semen parameters in samples of all patients over a set period of time: sperm concentration and motility, and normal sperm morphology. These factors were correlated with results of the hamster zona-free oocyte/human sperm penetration assay (SPA). One hundred patients with a sperm concentration ranging from 2 to 219 X 10(6)/ml, a motile sperm fraction ranging from 6.9 to 87%, and normal sperm morphology ranging from 1 to 39%, were evaluated. The statistical analysis system general linear model was used to judge the influence of the different variables. There was a statistically significant relationship between the per cent of sperm with normal morphology and penetration rate in the SPA (P = 0.001). Outcome of the SPA was also correlated with in vitro fertilization, retrospectively, in 84 patients. Thirty-eight patients had an SPA less than 10%, with no fertilization in vitro in 13 patients (33.3%) and fertilization in 25 (66.7%). Forty-five had an SPA greater than 10% with fertilization in 37 (82.2%) and no fertilization in eight (17.8%) patients.

This paper introduces the significant body of research on everyday literacies that has developed over the last 20 years and links it with the concerns of those working in the field of lifelong lear...

INTRODUCTION We work in Literacy Studies and approach the notion of community of practice to see how it can strengthen or challenge what we do. The field of literacy studies has developed in parallel with communities of practice work over the past twenty years. The two approaches have common roots in the work of Scribner and Cole (1981), but then the fields of situated learning and situated literacies largely developed separately. Our overall point is that the framings provided by theories of language, literacy, discourse and power are central to understanding the dynamics of communities of practice, but they are not made explicit in Wenger's formulations. These ideas form the basis of this and the following chapter. Our own work has examined the literacy practices of everyday life (as in Barton and Hamilton 1998; Barton, Hamilton and Ivanic 2000), and here we see that most social interactions in contemporary society, including those covered by Wenger, are textually mediated; this shapes, structures and constrains them. We will argue that the concept of reification in the communities of practice work is key to making the link with literacy studies. In this chapter, we start out from the vignettes that form the data for Wenger's work in his 1998 book. We examine them through the lens of literacy studies, demonstrating the centrality of literacy practices and arguing that a textually mediated social world is revealed.

This paper considers the policy environment of adult literacy as a space within which sites of learning are shaped and given value. It explores the interplay between international, national and local visions of what literacy is, who literacy learners are and what counts as learning, thereby linking broader social formations with local practices of literacy learning. The paper briefly reviews changes in UK policy related to adult literacy over the last 40 years, identifying some of the international and national influences on it. In particular, it describes the rising importance of international policy indicators through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union. These reach into the very heart of sites of learning, via the national media, policy documents and performance indicators used to evaluate both teachers and learners. It argues that the human resources view of literacy learning that has dominated recent policy initiatives produces a moral order of lit...

The microannelid Enchytraeus fragmentosus was found to be capable of sexual reproduction under axenic culture methods described. Axenic clones of this annelid reproducing by sexual and asexual methods are now available.