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BACKGROUND: Hope is correlated with quality of life and overall survivorship among patients with cancer. We aimed to identify sociodemographic and clinical determinants of hope among patients with gastrointestinal (GI) cancer. METHODS: Patients with GI cancer seen in radiation oncology between 10/2022 and 6/2023 were surveyed with the Adult Hope Scale (AHS) questionnaire, which assesses hope based on goal-setting and goal-striving beliefs. Linear regression and Pearsons/Spearmans correlation coefficients were used to evaluate associations between AHS scores and demographic or disease variables. RESULTS: One-hundred and forty-five (71.1% response rate) patients were included in the analysis. Most (75%) patients were symptomatic from disease, and Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) patients accounted for 30.3% of our cohort. Identifying as AAPI or needing an interpreter for clinic visits was significantly associated with lower AHS scores, and more AAPI patients required interpreter assistance compared to non-AAPI patients (P=0.04). Being divorced, unemployed, or female was also linked to less hope. No other differences in hope were found. CONCLUSIONS: Sociodemographic rather than prognostic clinical factors were predictive of hope among patients with GI cancer. Interventions to contextualize psychosocial risk factors have the potential to improve quality of life and oncologic outcomes.

Writing is fundamental to science and integral to its practice. This study examined two sixth-grade science teachers’ perspectives on and practices in teaching writing to English language learners (ELLs). Both teachers were interviewed on their beliefs about and experience in teaching writing to ELLs in science. They were also each observed once per week for their writing instruction over one semester. All writing samples produced by the ELLs during the semester were collected. Qualitative analysis of the data revealed that both teachers recognized the importance of writing to science but provided few opportunities for extended writing and limited writing instruction to ELLs. The teachers cited ELLs’ disinterest in science and lack of writing proficiency, as well as their own lack of time and preparedness to teach writing, as the main reasons for not making writing a priority in their teaching practice, for having lower expectations for ELLs, and for not offering substantive language/literacy support to ELLs. These findings indicate that the lofty goal of literacy-science integration remains largely unfulfilled, despite nearly two decades of strong push for border crossing by both science and literacy educators. They suggest that a reenvisioning of the relationship between literacy and science is needed to ensure effective science instruction for ELLs and other students in need of language/literacy support.

Becoming mathematically literate means not only knowledge of the content of mathematics but also understanding of the nature of mathematics and the literate practices involved in the creation, communication, and consumption of its content. This case study examined one mathematician’s view of the nature of mathematics and his literate practices. Data collected include semi-structured interviews with the mathematician, observations of his daily work routines, and his think-alouds during the reading of a disciplinary text. These data were analyzed qualitatively through an iterative process involving multiple readings and identification and refinement of codes. The analysis revealed that the mathematician (a) viewed mathematics as rigorous and demanding, both theoretical and practical, relatively stable but highly rewarding, interconnected with other disciplines, and involving discipline-legitimated discursive practices; (b) engaged in extensive reading/viewing and writing, valued learning from repeated trials and errors, and collaborated with an international network of peers in research; (c) used a range of reading strategies (e.g. close reading, summarizing, questioning, storying, evaluating, annotating) to help him make sense of the disciplinary text; and (d) marshaled both verbal and visual resources to create specialized knowledge, engage in rigorous reasoning, develop logical argument, and construct professional identity. These findings provide important insights that can help teachers design activities that are authentic to mathematics practices and effective for promoting mathematics literacy.

Factual writing is a key macrogenre of American K-12 schooling that is also valued in workplace and society. This study examined the genre and register features of two subgenres of factual writing--biography and report--composed by 48 sixth-grade students in a curriculum unit on scientists and science-related careers aimed at developing students' understanding of the nature of science. These texts were analyzed for a range of schematic, lexical, and grammatical features that instantiate the two target genres. Statistical and descriptive analyses revealed that the students demonstrated a fairly mature control over the schematic and lexical features that realize the purpose of either genre and relied heavily on the grammatical resources characteristic of everyday registers in constructing both genres. Additionally, there was a positive relationship between the students' genre/register familiarity and the holistic quality of their writing, and the students' reading proficiency was a significant predictor of their genre familiarity and holistic writing quality, but not their register understanding. These findings suggest that learning the grammatical resources characteristic of academic registers remains a major and potentially daunting task for many adolescents.

Voice is a key component of interpersonal meaning that denotes a writer's value judgement or personal feelings. An important aspect of voice in informational writing is epistemic stance, which indicates a writer's judgement of the information presented. This exploratory study examined adolescents' use of hedges and boosters to convey epistemic stance in their informational writing. Ninety-three seventh-grade and ninth-grade students from one American public school were asked to write a science report on crocodilia for a peer audience. The writing corpus was coded for the presence of linguistic markers of hedges and boosters. Statistical analysis reveals that the students as a whole used significantly more boosters than hedges and that there was no significant difference between the two grade levels in the use of hedges or boosters. Moreover, the students drew heavily on everyday language resources to instantiate either hedges or boosters, and there was a lack of lexical diversity in their linguistic choices. These findings suggest that adolescent learners were able to infuse voice in their informational writing but needed to expand their linguistic repertoires for instantiating voice in order to develop advanced literacy.

In this article, the researchers employ a linguistically informed approach to close reading that teaches a moral dilemma through an autobiographical short story. The approach, based on systemic functional linguistics, uses genre analysis that can draw students' attention to the structure, vocabulary, and grammar within literary texts, helping them better understand how meaning is constructed in the text. The authors exemplify this approach through the close reading of "Little Things Are Big" by Jesús Colón (1961) and provide implications for teaching literature about moral dilemmas and close reading to multilingual learners in a middle school ELA classroom. Through this analysis of the story, the authors demonstrate the power of close reading in a multilingual educational setting, showing how genre analysis enables a functional focus on language and meaning in literary reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic language is a kind of social language for the purpose of schooling. It is central to disciplinary learning, thinking, and communication. This study examined adolescents' use of academic language in informational writing, a genre highly valued in school, workplace, and society. Ninety-three seventh and ninth grade students from a U.S. public school were asked to write a science report based on a "wordless" picture book about a familiar class of animals called crocodylia. The student writing corpus was coded for presence of a constellation of academic language features. Statistical analyses of these data showed that (a) the adolescents made limited use of academic language features in their writing, (b) there were no significant differences between the two grade levels in academic language use, (c) there was a significant relationship between reading ability and academic language use, and (d) academic language use was a significant predictor of writing quality. These findings highlight both the importance of and the need for more explicit attention to academic language in secondary literacy instruction.

Purpose: This paper describes and exemplifies a pedagogical heuristic for promoting critical literacy in science. Design/methodology/approach: One way to support critical literacy in science is through a linguistically informed pedagogical heuristic called 5Es -- Enquire, Engage, Examine, Exercise and Extend. Findings: This paper describes the implementation of 5Es in a four-week middle school science unit on climate change, showing how the heuristic can be used to develop students' understanding of the varied ways authors use language to present information, structure text, infuse judgment and evaluation, engage with and position the reader and express epistemic commitment to knowledge claims. Originality/value: 5Es offer teachers a new heuristic for text exploration that develops students' critical language awareness, advanced literacy and disciplinary literacy at the same time.

Aptamers are nucleic acid sequences that specifically bind with target molecules and are vital to applications such as biosensing, drug development, disease diagnostics, etc. The traditional selection procedure of aptamers is based on the Systematic Evolution of Ligands by an Exponential Enrichment (SELEX) process, which relies on repeating cycles of screening and amplification. With the rapid development of aptamer applications, RNA and XNA aptamers draw more attention than before. But their selection is troublesome due to the necessary reverse transcription and transcription process (RNA) or low efficiency and accuracy of enzymes for amplification (XNA). In light of this, we review the recent advances in aptamer selection methods and give an outlook on future development in a non-SELEX approach, which simplifies the procedure and reduces the experimental costs. We first provide an overview of the traditional SELEX methods mostly designed for screening DNA aptamers to introduce the common tools and methods. Then a section on the current screening methods for RNA and XNA is prepared to demonstrate the efforts put into screening these aptamers and the current difficulties. We further predict that the future trend of aptamer selection lies in non-SELEX methods that do not require nucleic acid amplification. We divide non-SELEX methods into an immobilized format and non-immobilized format and discuss how high-resolution partitioning methods could facilitate the further improvement of selection efficiency and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Most reported research has primarily investigated wild-type transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis (ATTRwt-CA). However, the application of bone scintigraphy for hereditary transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis (ATTRv-CA) has not been systematically investigated. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to evaluate the diagnostic value of 99mTc-PYP scintigraphy in ATTRv-CA. Methods: Fifty-four patients were enrolled in a highly suspected cardiac amyloidosis cohort. Transthyretin (TTR) gene characteristics were summarized in the ATTRv-CA group. In 99mTc-PYP scintigraphy, the diagnostic efficiency of the visual score (VGS) and heart-to-contralateral chest (H/CL) ratio were evaluated. Furthermore, the interobserver consistency among the diagnosticians was investigated. Results: Twenty-eight patients were diagnosed with ATTRv-CA with eight genotypes. The Ala97Ser genotype accounts for 46% (n = 13) with a mean age of disease onset, definite diagnosis, and interval of 61.6 ± 1.9, 66.5 ± 1.3, and 4.0 (3.0, 6.2) years, respectively. Their VGS is Grade 3, and their H/CL ratio is higher than that of the non-Ala97Ser group, but no statistical significance exists (mean H/CL: 1.95 ± 0.06 vs. 1.87 ± 0.02, p = 0.844). Additionally, ATTRv-CA patients showed VGS ≥ 2, and mean H/CL ratio of 2.09 ± 0.06. The sensitivity and specificity of VGS were 100% and 65%, respectively. And the interobserver consistency analysis of VGS showed the intraclass correlation coefficient is 0.522. The best cutoff value of H/CL ratio was 1.51 (AUC = 0.996), and the diagnostic consistency of H/CL (bias: 0.018) was high. Conclusions: Ala97Ser is the most common genotype in ATTRv-CA in our cohort, with characteristics of later onset and rapid progression, but delayed diagnosis and extensive 99mTc-PYP uptake. Overall, ATTRv-CA patients showed moderate-to-extensive myocardial 99mTc-PYP uptake. Additionally, VGS carries subjectivity, low specialty and interobserver consistency. But H/CL exhibit high diagnostic efficacy and interobserver consistency. The H/CL ratio is more useful than VGS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]