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This note reports the results of a Delphi panel priority setting exercise for English Education research. An initial item-generating survey of 75 English Education academics and teachers worldwide was conducted; a thematic analysis of responses generated 31 potential priorities for future research. An adapted Delphi panel consisting of 44 English Education experts was invited to take part in two rounds of ranking; four major priorities were identified at the end of the second round. These were: social justice in English education; race in English education; translating research into and out of the classroom; and the nature of the subject of English.

A tribute to Keith Davidson, who died in April 2021. Keith combined a deep and passionate knowledge of linguistics with an equally deep and passionate understanding of the teaching and assessment of English. His insight and engagement with key issues of linguistics and English education is an invaluable legacy to students and teachers of language across the English-speaking world – and beyond.

The teaching of grammar has been strongly debated for decades, often with reference to an alleged decline in the 1960s. This article takes a historical perspective on grammar, or knowledge about language, within English Education. In the eighteenth century, Adam Smith’s Lectures in Rhetoric and Belles-lettres offered a discernibly modern combination of English language and literature. In the nineteenth century, however, university English courses were divided between belles-lettres and philology, while the conditions of elementary schooling favoured “factual” instruction in grammatical “correctness” based on an ideology rooted in the emergence of Standard English. In the twentieth century, the Newbolt Report and Blue Books questioned grammar teaching, but grammatical analysis remained part of public examinations until the 1960s. The last fifty years have seen major advances in linguistic education, but curriculum and assessment procedures continue to conceptualise grammar as the prescriptive teaching of “correct” forms of language.

In the absence of face-to-face meetings, FDA and industry implemented regulatory workarounds to maintain drug and biologics approvals. These could be here to stay.

Harold Rosen’s Writings on Life, Language and Learning, 1958 to 2008 is a rare joy: a book you can open at any page and be immediately engaged by a thinker about language and education who is at on...

Companies are doing their best to accelerate experimental drugs and vaccines for COVID-19 through the pipeline. Each faces its own set of challenges, but all agree on the need for a radical rethink of the clinical development process for pandemics. Companies are doing their best to accelerate experimental drugs and vaccines for COVID-19 through the pipeline. Each faces its own set of challenges, but all agree on the need for a radical rethink of the clinical development process for pandemics.

Evelyn Arizpe and Gabrielle Cliff Hodges have brought together recent studies of young people reading in widely different contexts around the world, from Europe, Canada, South America, Africa and t...

Passive materials in human skeletal muscle tissues play an important role in force output of skeletal muscles. This paper introduces a multiscale modeling framework to investigate how age-associated variations on microscale passive muscle components, including microstructural geometry (e.g., connective tissue thickness) and material properties (e.g., anisotropy), influence the force output and deformations of the continuum skeletal muscle. We first define a representative volume element (RVE) for the microstructure of muscle and determine the homogenized macroscale mechanical properties of the RVE from the separate mechanical properties of the individual components of the RVE, including muscle fibers and connective tissue with its associated collagen fibers. The homogenized properties of the RVE are then used to define the elements of the continuum muscle model to evaluate the force output and deformations of the whole muscle. Conversely, the regional deformations of the continuum model are fed back to the RVE model to determine the responses of the individual microscale components. Simulations of muscle isometric contractions at a range of muscle lengths are performed to investigate the effects of muscle architectural changes (e.g., pennation angles) due to aging on force output and muscle deformation. The correlations between the pennation angle, the shear deformation in the microscale connective tissue (an indicator for the lateral force transmission), the angle difference between the fiber direction and principal strain direction and the resulting shear deformation at the continuum scale, as well as the force output of the skeletal muscle are also discussed.

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy of the Department of Army/Navy/Air Force, Department of Defense, or U.S. Government.

The very title of this book invites grammatical analysis. What are the pragmatics: the implied purpose, the context? Does “how” refer to orientation or method? (If I were asked in the US how I’d te...

2018 was the year when the funding machine for privately held biotech companies went into overdrive, with mega-rounds and rapid flotations. John Hodgson brings us this deep dive.

A surge of efforts focused on the drug target B cell maturation antigen could transform the treatment of multiple myeloma and help to establish the relative merits and optimization strategies for emerging treatment modalities with wider applications. A surge of efforts focused on the drug target B cell maturation antigen could transform the treatment of multiple myeloma and help to establish the relative merits and optimization strategies for emerging treatment modalities with wider applications.

Two tribute pieces about Glen Cavaliero, a founder-member of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society and for many years the referee for articles submitted to the Journal.

GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). Following a previous Long Database Report (Dengler et al. 2018, Phyto- coenologia 48, 331–347), we provide here the first update on content and functionality of GrassPlot. The current version (GrassPlot v. 2.00) contains a total of 190,673 plots of different grain sizes across 28,171 independent plots, with 4,654 nested-plot series including at least four grain sizes. The database has improved its content as well as its functionality, including addition and harmonization of header data (land use, information on nestedness, structure and ecology) and preparation of species composition data. Currently, GrassPlot data are intensively used for broad-scale analyses of different aspects of alpha and beta diversity in grassland ecosystems.

Background Occupational and environmental airborne asbestos concentrations are too low and variable for lifetime exposures to be estimated reliably, and building workers and occupants may suffer higher exposure when asbestos in older buildings is disturbed or removed. Mesothelioma risks from current asbestos exposures are therefore not known. Methods We interviewed and measured asbestos levels in lung samples from 257 patients treated for pneumothorax and 262 with resected lung cancer, recruited in England and Wales. Average lung burdens in British birth cohorts from 1940 to 1992 were estimated for asbestos-exposed workers and the general population. Results Regression analysis of British mesothelioma death rates and average lung burdens in birth cohorts born before 1965 suggests a lifetime mesothelioma risk of approximately 0.01% per fibre/mg of amphiboles in the lung. In those born since 1965, the average lung burden is ∼1 fibre/mg among those with no occupational exposure. Conclusions The average lifetime mesothelioma risk caused by recent environmental asbestos exposure in Britain will be about 1 in 10 000. The risk is an order of magnitude higher in a subgroup of exposed workers and probably in occupants in the most contaminated buildings. Further data are needed to discover whether asbestos still present in buildings, particularly schools, is a persistent or decreasing hazard to workers who disturb it and to the general population, and whether environmental exposure occurs predominantly in childhood or after beginning work. Similar studies are needed in other countries to estimate continuing environmental and occupational mesothelioma hazards worldwide, including the contribution from chrysotile.

The Harry Potter series is a phenomenon. The books have been translated into over 60 languages, spawned eight films and provided numerous spin-offs and merchandising opportunities. The initial medi...