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Pea (Pisum sativum L.) is a grain legume widely cultivated in temperate climates. It is important in the race for food security owing to its multipurpose low-input requirement and environmental promoting traits. Pea is key in nitrogen fixation, biodiversity preservation, and nutritional functions as food and feed. Unfortunately, like most crops, pea production is constrained by several pests and diseases, of which rhizosphere disease dwellers are the most critical due to their long-term persistence in the soil and difficulty to manage. Understanding the rhizosphere environment can improve host plant root microbial association to increase yield stability and facilitate improved crop performance through breeding. Thus, the use of various germplasm and genomic resources combined with scientific collaborative efforts has contributed to improving pea resistance/cultivation against rhizospheric diseases. This improvement has been achieved through robust phenotyping, genotyping, agronomic practices, and resistance breeding. Nonetheless, resistance to rhizospheric diseases is still limited, while biological and chemical-based control strategies are unrealistic and unfavourable to the environment, respectively. Hence, there is a need to consistently scout for host plant resistance to resolve these bottlenecks. Herein, in view of these challenges, we reflect on pea breeding for resistance to diseases caused by rhizospheric pathogens, including fusarium wilt, root rots, nematode complex, and parasitic broomrape. Here, we will attempt to appraise and harmonise historical and contemporary knowledge that contributes to pea resistance breeding for soilborne disease management and discuss the way forward.

Studies on the application of centre applied linguistics circles’ writing pedagogies in EFL settings have placed great emphasis on the agency and innovativeness of local teachers. Local teachers often exercise absolute power over students’ learning processes by transplanting Western approaches to writing into their local contexts. However, the active roles of student-writers in negotiating, constructing and transforming these pedagogical imports to suit their needs have been overlooked in the literature. This study examined how my students’ negotiations with writing pedagogies that I imported from the USA helped them to move from writing to display knowledge to writing in order to construct and transform knowledge, at levels such as self, content and form. It was found that these pedagogies helped me critically reflect upon my position as an EFL writing tutor as well as scaffold my students’ learning accordingly. They also helped my students to assume active roles in writing classes.

This paper explores the epistemological affordances of "Islamic ethics" as alternative knowledge within intercultural education. Despite the calls for epistemological plurality in intercultural education that centre epistemologies of the South, educators may find it hard to reaffirm their situated knowledges and practices because they may have been overwhelmed by the wide endorsements of the mainstream literature. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 25 EFL teachers, this study aims to (a) unpack educators' perspectives around the adoption of alternative knowledges anchored in local epistemologies and sensibilities, (b) foreground educators' epistemic positioning around alternative knowledges and how they are perceived as sites for cognitive and pedagogical renewal to account for local particularities and conditions and (c) examine inter-epistemic tensions within educators' reasoning in terms of how they navigate (in)congruencies between the mainstream and Islamic philosophy at the conceptual, pedagogical and practical levels. Findings reveal that educators acknowledge the legitimacy of "Islamic ethics" and their epistemological/pedagogical significance in intercultural education. However, some factors may problematize educators' attempts at making use of "Islamic ethics" including the additional burden of reflecting alternative knowledges while attending to contextual factors (class size, the course's orientation, exams, time constraints, etc.) and the lack of sufficient training in intercultural education.

Cyst excision with hepaticojejunostomy is the well defined standard treatment for choledochal cysts. Intra or extrahepatic bile duct stone formation are serious complications observed in long-term follow-up after hepaticojejunostomy. Revision of hepaticojejunostomy is the most defined treatment of intra or extrahepatic bile duct stones secondary to hepaticojejunal anastomotic stenosis. We report two cases of common hepatic duct and/or intrahepatic bile duct stones that developed after hepatico-jejunostomy for choledochal cyst resection, that were treated with percutaneous transhepatic balloon dilatation of the hepaticojejunal anastomotic stenosis. During percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography a catheter was passed through the hepaticojejunal anastomotic stenosis and the hepatic duct-jejunal anastomotic junction was dilated with a balloon. The common hepatic duct stone and intrahepatic bile duct stones thus passed to the jejunum following the dilatation. The patients recovered uneventfully and are free of stones.

Conceptualizing branding as ongoing strategic efforts formulated by transnational English medium instruction EMI)-oriented universities in today's competitive Higher Education (HE) market in order to create uniqueness for their academic programs as branded commodities, this paper (a) examines the forms of branding crafted by universities in the Arabian Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates) in order to claim uniqueness for their academic programs, and (b) inquires into whose interests (i.e., students, teachers, universities, investors or governments) are thus best served. Data were collected from policy documents, promotional materials (e.g., slogans) and official speeches on recent major branding initiatives undertaken by universities across the region. These data were treated as a research site which has its own history, players and nuances. The findings reveal that because of the different branding efforts intertwined with neoliberal language policy agendas undertaken by universities, with generous logistic, legal, and financial supports from their governments, a collision of conflicting interests and objectives among different players has arisen. This undesirable outcome leads governments and universities to represent and imagine each other as rivals instead of as collaborators aiming to secure various regional interests, including joint educational work. The implication of this phenomenon is that transnational English medium instruction-oriented policies have brought about apparent educational inequalities and social class in HE sectors of the region. This paper closes with recommendations to align the branding efforts with the regional interests stipulated in the Arab Bureau of Education for the Arabian Gulf countries.

The study referred to in this article adopted a dialogic approach, putting the voices of experienced teachers and supervisors into the form of a dialogue in order to examine how both parties perceive, enact and justify their pedagogical practices in actual school settings. Various sets of data were utilised, including interviews, classroom observations and a post-observation conference with Saudi EFL teachers and supervisors. The findings demonstrate that teachers and supervisors all occupy different positions in the school hierarchy in the TESOL landscape, depending on the “type” as well as “amount of capital” they possess. Specifically, although some supervisors continue to believe that their accumulated experience, including teaching credentials, supervision and administrative experience, outweighs the academic and scientific capital of teachers, teachers also claim that their accumulated experience of several years of teaching, their EFL qualifications and training, their knowledge of ground realities in school settings and their experience of two different national educational systems have enabled and legitimised them to devise their own classroom practices. It is therefore concluded that supervisors should re-conceptualise their roles, challenge their own assumptions and be willing to engage in continuous critical discussions with the teachers. Both parties conduct their pedagogical practice with strong sense of agency/engagement. This study argues that these forms of agency in language teaching need further scholarly attention, for “they are inherently contextual and dialogic, in that they have a history and a present that resides in an ongoing negotiated state of intense and essential axiological interaction”.

This paper argues that reading English Medium Instruction (EMI) as a performative technology of acceleration in the highly competitive conditions of today's global higher education (HE) contexts is one way to gain insights into present-day realities of EMI orientations, experiences, and practices. In so doing, it examines the interplay of EMI, HE, and Tomlinson's [2007. "The Culture of Speed: The Coming of Immediacy." London: Sage] three cultural narratives of speed. A Saudi HE institution, Sroor University (SU; a pseudonym), is used as a case example study to explore how the cultural narratives of speed have been experienced by language teachers, administrators, and engineering faculty members. The findings of this interview-led study show that a sense of urgency, active control, and an overwhelming tendency to direct all its educational efforts towards the needs of industry is prevalent in the operations of the university. It was also found that the culture of speed has brought about excitement, pleasure, pains, and risk to the academics in their everyday EMI practices. It concludes that reading these complex constellations of experiences through temporal perspectives allows us to capture not only the effects of the culture of speed but also how unequal power relations are played out among social actors within and across individual contexts.

The field of applied linguistics is a remarkable case of deep intersection of the skewed geopolitics of knowledge (epistemic inequalities) and language (the ascendency of English as both a topic of research and academic lingua franca). The dominance of the Anglo-sphere through epistemology and language in applied linguistics renders the process of decolonization even more problematic than in other fields, for the only available tools to decolonize are those of coloniality. We argue that despite the end of formal decolonization and the incessant decolonial impulses, the Global South(s) may be still colonizable. Through ages of epistemic dominance, the Global South(s) may have encountered some tensions and challenges to exercise and legitimize ways of theorizing and doing applied linguistics research "otherwise." That is, these alternative visions and praxis may again be underpinned by western traditions of thought that have shaped their foundational understandings of what language, linguistics, and practicality are. Epistemological delinking may be impossible as long as decoloniality itself is enunciated through the dominant voices and channels and according to the rationalities against which decoloniality in applied linguistics has been made to be understood. We go beyond the usual question of whether decolonization is possible, to ask: What decolonialities are possible to account for the Global South(s) and their varying degrees of colonizability? We employ what we term 'collective introspection-retrospection' as an epistemological journey of re-knowing, re-feeling, re-sensing, and re-imagining alternative epistemologies in applied linguistics.

The effects of neoliberal ideologies in higher education (HE) today are manifested in different forms including self-reliance, intellectual fatigue, academic burnout, incessant competition, and constant frustration among teachers/students, and other precarious working conditions. Conceptualized through the arguments on creating possible alternatives to neoliberalism in relation to English language teaching (ELT), this article examines the ways in which three transnational TESOL teachers are negotiating, resisting, and creating alternatives to neoliberal ELT in their everyday pedagogical practices. The data emerged from two sources: (1) reflective journals and (2) semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that while the teachers were subverting neoliberal ELT in their workplace, they became embroiled in complex mental situations, including self-consciousness, tensions, ambivalent positions, strong emotions, and other negative states of mind. In this context, extensive reading as a means for subverting neoliberalizing practices in ELT; father--son conversations as resistance to fierce competition in ELT; and portfolio reflection letters as tools for solidarity in neoliberal ELT are all possible strategies used by the three participants at their workplace. The paper closes with reflections on the forms of alternatives that have been exhibited by each teacher and implications for ELT.

Conceptualizing EMI-cum-acceleration policy in a transnational HE market as the regulation and institutionalization of language practices through a chronometrical approach to time for the sake of global economic competition and social mobility, this qualitative case study explores the experiences and enactments of such a policy by six engineering students at Manar University (a pseudonym) in Saudi Arabia. The data were gathered from analysis of policy documents, individual interviews, and a group interview. The findings reveal that the ways in which each student negotiates, resists, and desires such a policy suggest that an individual has some temporal resources and autonomy to make sense of "the acceleration experience" within the broader "structural forces of acceleration" (Vostal, 2016, p.?117) created at the university. It was also found that students are positioned in a double-bind-between the capitalist logic of accumulation and competition (speed), and the democratic value of equity in the EMI program.

Background/Objective: To determine the prevalence of homelessness or at-risk for homelessness in the ED setting.Methods: Using a 5 question screening tool derived from teh US department of Housing and Urband Development (HUD), Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Beterans Administration (VA) definition for homelessness, we surveyed all patients meeting inclusion criteria on scheudled shifts in one of three EDs in Northeastern Pennsylvania  Two survey periods were selected to represent seasonal variations.Results: 4395 subjects were included in the analysis.  The mean age of participants was 50.8 (SD 20.5) and 2,557(58.2%) were women.  The mean age of those who screened positive for homelessness or at-risk for homelessness was 43.1 (SD16.6). Overall, 136 (3.1%) participants screened positive for at-risk for homelessness and 309 (7.0%) screened positive for homelessness.  103 (9.8%) subjects screened positive for homelessness or at-risk for homelessness on weekends and 312 (10.3%) on weekedays (p=-.64).  The proportion of those screening positive for homelessness or at-risk for homelessness varied by site: 145 (7.5%) at hte trauma cetner, 151 (9.1%) at the suburban site and 149 (18.7%) at the center city site, p

Little resistance to the pea weevil insect pest (Bruchus pisorum) is available in pea (Pisum sativum) cultivars, highlighting the need to search for sources of resistance in Pisum germplasm and to decipher the genetic basis of resistance. To address this need, we screened the response to pea weevil in a Pisum germplasm collection (324 accession, previously genotyped) under field conditions over four environments. Significant variation for weevil seed infestation (SI) was identified, with resistance being frequent in P. fulvum, followed by P. sativum ssp. elatius, P. abyssinicum, and P. sativum ssp. humile. SI tended to be higher in accessions with lighter seed color. SI was also affected by environmental factors, being favored by high humidity during flowering and hampered by warm winter temperatures and high evapotranspiration during and after flowering. Merging the phenotypic and genotypic data allowed genome-wide association studies (GWAS) yielding 73 markers significantly associated with SI. Through the GWAS models, 23 candidate genes were found associated with weevil resistance, highlighting the interest of five genes located on chromosome 6. These included gene 127136761 encoding squalene epoxidase; gene 127091639 encoding a transcription factor MYB SRM1; gene 127097033 encoding a 60S ribosomal protein L14; gene 127092211, encoding a BolA-like family protein, which, interestingly, was located within QTL BpLD.I, earlier described as conferring resistance to weevil in pea; and gene 127096593 encoding a methyltransferase. These associated genes offer valuable potential for developing pea varieties resistant to Bruchus spp. and efficient utilization of genomic resources through marker-assisted selection (MAS). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the concepts of critical thinking and self-voice have been extensively discussed in a second language writing, little attention has been given, on the pedagogical level, to critical thinking and self-voice in college EFL writing instruction. To fill such a void, this paper attempts to propose some pedagogical tasks namely: persuasive writing tasks, draft workshops one-on-one mentoring approaches for finding a place for critical thinking and self-voice in EFL classrooms. In doing so, this paper provides the operational definitions of critical thinking and self-voice concepts. It then discusses how these two concepts are closely related to complement EFL writing learning. In what follows, it presents the rationale for finding a place for critical thinking and self-voice in EFL writing. It then touches on some pedagogical practices for developing critical thinking and self-voice in classrooms. Lastly, it addresses some challenges related to implementing critical thinking and self-voice tasks in EFL classrooms.

Though the concept of noticing has been extensively addressed in the SLA literature, few studies suggest promoting noticing through collaborative feedback tasks (CFTs) in an EFL college writing classroom. To fill this gap, this paper attempts to provide a framework for promoting noticing through CFTs using three sequenced and interrelated CFTs: (I) "pre-noticing stage" that aims at instructing the students on how the feedback task functions and what its purposes are, (II) "while-noticing stage" that is based on two interrelated feedback tasks, namely "contrastive-critical framing" and "transformed practice," and (III) "post-noticing stage" that is aimed at helping students reflect on what they have learned during the entire feedback process. To begin with, the article provides definitions of noticing. It then discusses how noticing and feedback are closely related to facilitate second or foreign language writing learning. In what follows, it discusses how noticing and CFTs complement one another in order to facilitate critical and focused noticing to help students enhance their writing accuracy and fluency. Lastly, the article examines some challenges in promoting noticing through CFTs in an EFL writing classroom. (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper explores the epistemological affordances of Islamic ethics as alternative knowledge within intercultural education. Despite the calls for epistemological plurality in intercultural education that centre epistemologies of the South, educators may find it hard to reaffirm their situated knowledges and practices because they may have been overwhelmed by the wide endorsements of the mainstream literature. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 25 EFL teachers, this study aims to (a) unpack educators' perspectives around the adoption of alternative knowledges anchored in local epistemologies and sensibilities, (b) foreground educators' epistemic positioning around alternative knowledges and how they are perceived as sites for cognitive and pedagogical renewal to account for local particularities and conditions and (c) examine inter-epistemic tensions within educators' reasoning in terms of how they navigate (in)congruencies between the mainstream and Islamic philosophy at the conceptual, pedagogical and practical levels. Findings reveal that educators acknowledge the legitimacy of Islamic ethics and their epistemological/pedagogical significance in intercultural education. However, some factors may problematize educators' attempts at making use of Islamic ethics including the additional burden of reflecting alternative knowledges while attending to contextual factors (class size, the course's orientation, exams, time constraints, etc.) and the lack of sufficient training in intercultural education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]