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Summary: Aim: To assess the efficiency of decontamination of flexible nasoendoscopes using a chlorine dioxide wipe system and assessing the risk of disease transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: Prospective and retrospective review of 544 patient episodes of nasoendoscopy and a study of 41 patient procedures and 22 members of staff at an ENT Outpatient Department from September 2020 to March 2021. Results: Among 41 randomly selected episodes of nasoendoscopy in the clinic, there was 93%–100% compliance with decontamination guidelines suggested by ENT UK. Among 544 patients who had nasoendoscopies, 20 had RT-PCR tests within two weeks and all yielded a negative result; no clusters of consecutive endoscopies were noted. None among the 22 clinic staff had symptoms of COVID-19 infection during the study period. Conclusion: Accepting the limitations of the study design, this audit found no evidence of nosocomial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus related to use or reprocessing of flexible nasoendoscopes among patients and staff following good compliance to ENT UK decontamination guidelines.

Objective: To investigate the within-day and between-day test-retest reliability of hip abduction, internal rotation, and external rotation strength measurements taken using a portable device externally stabilizing a handheld dynamometer in healthy participants. Design: Observational study. Setting: Institute of Technology Carlow, Ireland, a third-level education institute. Participants: Healthy participants (N=18; 11 male, 7 female) who participate in a field sport for more than 2 hours per week were recruited via convenience sampling. Interventions: Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures: Hip abduction, internal rotation, and external rotation peak force during a maximal voluntary isometric contraction (N). The 3 best values recorded for each movement for each day were used to analyze within-day and between-day test-retest reliability. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), coefficients of variance, standard error of measurement, and minimal detectable change statistics were also calculated. Results: External fixation of a handheld dynamometer produced excellent test-retest reliability for within-day (ICC>0.934) and between-day (ICC>0.802) contexts. Conclusions: Clinical measurements of hip strength can be performed reliably, efficiently, and cost effectively using the methods described. Furthermore, the use of external fixation eliminates the influence of tester strength on the handheld dynamometry measurements.

Abstract The goal of this study was to investigate how early childhood teachers reported responding to the instructional mandates they received. To answer our research questions, we completed semi-structured interviews with 20 early childhood teachers and coded their responses. The participating teachers were recruited from a large Head Start agency in the United States. We found that Head Start teachers reported feeling caught between two competing priorities: the priority the program placed on compliance with instructional routines and the priority the teachers placed on addressing children’s social, emotional, and behavioral needs. Essentially, teachers perceived that they must demonstrate compliance to the program’s instructional mandates first and foremost. Furthermore, they perceived that the program’s instructional coaches were monitoring their compliance with the mandates. As a result of this workplace context, the Head Start teachers reported that they did not feel permitted to alter the program’s required instructional procedures. The implications for policy and research are discussed.

In the present study, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) was employed to characterise the metabolic profiles of two human ovarian cancer cell lines A2780 (cisplatin-sensitive) and A2780CR (cisplatin-resistant) in response to their exposure to melittin, a cytotoxic peptide from bee venom. In addition, the metabolomics data were supported by application of Biolog microarray technology to examine the utilisation of carbon sources by the two cell lines. Data extraction with MZmine 2.14 and database searching were applied to provide metabolite lists. Principal component analysis (PCA) gave clear separation between the cisplatin-sensitive and resistant strains and their respective controls. The cisplatin-resistant cells were slightly more sensitive to melittin than the sensitive cells with IC50 values of 4.5 and 6.8 μg/mL respectively, although the latter cell line exhibited the greatest metabolic perturbation upon treatment. The changes induced by melittin in the cisplatin-sensitive cells led mostly to reduced levels of amino acids in the proline/glutamine/arginine pathway, as well as to decreased levels of carnitines, polyamines, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+). The effects on energy metabolism were supported by the data from the Biolog assays. The lipid compositions of the two cell lines were quite different with the A2780 cells having higher levels of several ether lipids than the A2780CR cells. Melittin also had some effect on the lipid composition of the cells. Overall, this study suggests that melittin might have some potential as an adjuvant therapy in cancer treatment.

This article investigates the awarding of scholarships to students from historically disadvantaged communities to attend elite schools in South Africa. Specifically, the article analyses the narrated accounts of former scholarship recipients who reflect on their experiences of entering an elite secondary school as scholarship students. Using Bourdieu's notion of cultural capital to explain the interviewees' experiences in the elite school space, the article shows that success in one part of an educational field does not necessarily equate to success in another. Further, providing students with the financial means to access elite education does not mean that they enter into the school contexts as 'equal players'. As such, what the article highlights is that the acceptance of a scholarship for students from historically disadvantaged communities is far more complex and multi-layered than is anticipated by all stakeholders.

The venom of Apis mellifera (honey bee) has been reported to play a role in immunotherapy, but existing evidence to support its immuno-modulatory claims is insufficient. Four fractions from whole bee venom (BV) were separated using medium pressure liquid chromatography. Their ability to induce the production of cytokines TNFα, IL-1β and IL-6 in phorbol-12-myristate-13-acetate (PMA)-treated U937 cells was assessed. The levels of the three cytokines produced by stimulation with the four fractions and crude BV without LPS were not significantly different from negative control values. However, co-stimulation of the cells with LPS and Fraction 4 (F-4) induced a 1.6-fold increase in TNF-α level (p < 0.05) compared to LPS alone. Likewise, LPS-induced IL-1β production was significantly synergised in the presence of F-1 (nine-fold), F-2 (six-fold), F-3 (four-fold) and F-4 (two-fold) fractions, but was only slightly enhanced with crude BV (1.5-fold) relative to LPS. Furthermore, the LPS-stimulated production of IL-6 was not significantly increased in cells co-treated with F-2 and F-3, but the organic fraction (F-4) showed an inhibitory effect (p < 0.05) on IL-6 production. The latter was elucidated by NMR spectroscopy and found to contain(Z)-9-eicosen-1-ol. The effects observed with the purified BV fractions were more marked than those obtained with the crude sample.

Early care and education programs like Head Start provide a critical foundation for later achievement for children from vulnerable communities. Notably, recruiting and retaining bilingual teachers is an ongoing struggle for many Head Start agencies. Assistant teachers are more likely to be bilingual than their lead teacher counterparts (Jacoby, in press) and are important contributors to a workforce pipeline that diversifies staff. We conducted this qualitative study with 35 assistant teachers to understand how workplace attributes influence satisfaction and job retention in Head Start. Workplace attributes such as wages and support for professional education and those with symbolic value, such as the robustness of the program, both played an important role. We also found that the "instrumental-symbolic framework" demonstrated utility for understanding how workplace attributes might be leveraged to recruit and retain linguistically and culturally competent teaching staff.

A research study of children and young people affected by parental HIV in Scotland provides the vehicle for a discussion of some of the complex issues at the heart of qualitative research. The research team sought to conduct a study which would be inclusive and empowering for those children and young people and their parents who took part. But in carrying out research on such a secret and stigmatised subject, we found ourselves caught in the middle of competing requirements of confidentiality and openness, protection and autonomy, sponsorship and independence. We conclude that our study, by nature of its subject and subjectivities, illuminates dilemmas which cannot be resolved simply by constructing better protocols. They are central to the research process, and their partial resolution demands continuous negotiation between the researchers and the participants, and also the other stakeholders. In these complex circumstances the process of individual reflexivity can be usefully enhanced by a team approach. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0302332

In this quantitative study, we report the book preferences of a diverse group of preschool children (N = 61) from two distinct early childhood settings: an urban Head Start and a private preschool. Children participated in a book selection task and were also asked a series of questions about how and why they chose the book. Parent questionnaires were gathered to provide information on children's home language, race/ethnicity, gender, and book and media exposure. All children overwhelmingly preferred books featuring popular television characters on the cover. Gender emerged as the only relevant socio-demographic feature, with girls being more likely than boys to choose a book with a popular media character. Overall, children's book preferences were more similar than different despite the diversity of the sample. Furthermore, these results expand the notion of genre in relation to children's book choices.

A study was conducted in a large Head Start organization that serves large numbers of Latino children in order to empirically describe the nature and quality of the classroom language learning environment. By observing 147 literacy-based lessons in 6 classrooms and surveying 167 teachers throughout the organization, we investigated the amount of teachers' use of extended discourse during literacy-based lessons, and when and how Spanish and/or English was used as the medium of communication. Research Findings: Only 22% of the 147 literacy-based lessons observed fostered extended discourse; the most commonly implemented lesson was characterized by a routine format of the teacher talking and the children listening. English was regarded as the language of instruction, whereas Spanish was used mostly to regulate behavior and emotions. By fitting multilevel models to the data, we found that teaching practice was relatively stable across the classrooms. Practice or Policy: More emphasis should be placed on professional training focused on supporting classroom language interactions that foster literacy development and on the use of language that best fosters and facilitates such extended discourse.

Early care and education programs like Head Start provide a critical foundation for later achievement for children from vulnerable communities. Notably, recruiting and retaining bilingual teachers is an ongoing struggle for many Head Start agencies. Assistant teachers are more likely to be bilingual than their lead teacher counterparts (Jacoby, in press) and are important contributors to a workforce pipeline that diversifies staff. We conducted this qualitative study with 35 assistant teachers to understand how workplace attributes influence satisfaction and job retention in Head Start. Workplace attributes such as wages and support for professional education and those with symbolic value, such as the robustness of the program, both played an important role. We also found that the instrumental-symbolic framework demonstrated utility for understanding how workplace attributes might be leveraged to recruit and retain linguistically and culturally competent teaching staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]