Free Productive Ability and Lexical Text Analysis to Improve Student Writing

The classroom is often an arena of Controlled Productive Ability. Within this system, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. Further, this ‘banking’ concept of education, extends the scope of action afforded to students only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. Education is thus seen as a process of depositing knowledge into passive students. Freire (1970) exhorts that ‘…the more completely they (the students) accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited on them’. This research paper will look at how a class of low-intermediate Japanese learners of English, can become more attuned to Free Productive Ability, the active use of productive vocabulary, in their written English endeavors. Writing itself is a production skill, in that it requires learners to produce language, as with speaking activities. Written English can be used to produce a message that you want others to understand. However, at most stages of the writing process from selecting themes and topics, brainstorming ideas, organizing ideas, drafting a text, reviewing and editing before submission, and finally grading and reflecting, the student is part of a passive process managed by the authority of the teacher. This inhibits student critical thinking and the ownership of their own productive abilities. An alternative is to develop and practice a free productive system, limiting the traditional teacher-centric learning system. At all times, students should be encouraged to think, and tackle problems presented to them on their own. This research builds on previous research of student self-affirmation (Deadman, 2015a, 2015b, 2016a and 2016b)

Offenders as Victims of Crime? An Investigation into the Relationship Between Criminal Behaviour and Victimisation

In this paper we consider the association between victimisation and offending behaviour using data from the Youth Lifestyles Survey. We consider the impact of violent, non-violent and persistent offending on the probability of being a victim of violent and non-violent crime and find a positive association between these using univariate probit estimates. However, taking into account the endogenous nature of offending and victimisation via a bivariate probit model, we find that univariate estimates understate the association. We suggest that policy recommendations should only be based on the bivariate analysis of the association between offending and victimisation.

Practice and Assessment of Reading Classes Using Moodle

This research paper details the extensive use of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) for a content-based reading syllabus at Gunma University, through the software program Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment ), a free and open-source software learning management system used at Gunma University. 　　The research basis of this paper is within the sphere of Action Research , as a valuable professional development tool (Nunan, 2001) based on this researcher’s perceived valuation of the system and how it could better aid students to perform better in and be more motivated towards their English language and reading studies, introduce new technological skills and abilities, and aid teachers in better preparation, teaching and assessment of reading classes. Moodle enthuses that the Lesson Module ‘enables a teacher to deliver content and/or practice activities in interesting and flexible ways...teachers can choose to increase engagement and ensure understanding by including a variety of questions, such as multiple choice, matching and short answer.’ (Moodle, 2016). Therefore, this paper will ascertain whether the syllabus achieved a greater engagement and enjoyment by the students, and ensured better comprehension and understanding of key tasks and instructions. In addition, it will detail how teachers can benefit course management by employing such technology within the classroom

Taming tosyl azide: the development of a scalable continuous diazo transfer process

Heat and shock sensitive tosyl azide was generated and used on demand in a telescoped diazo transfer process. Small quantities of tosyl azide were accessed in a one pot batch procedure using shelf stable, readily available reagents. For large scale diazo transfer reactions tosyl azide was generated and used in a telescoped flow process, to mitigate the risks associated with handling potentially explosive reagents on scale. The in situ formed tosyl azide was used to rapidly perform diazo transfer to a range of acceptors, including β-ketoesters, β-ketoamides, malonate esters and β-ketosulfones. An effective in-line quench of sulfonyl azides was also developed, whereby a sacrificial acceptor molecule ensured complete consumption of any residual hazardous diazo transfer reagent. The telescoped diazo transfer process with in-line quenching was used to safely prepare over 21 g of an α-diazocarbonyl in >98% purity without any column chromatography

Analysis of the flavonoid component of bioactive New Zealand mānuka (Leptospermum scoparium) honey and the isolation, characterisation and synthesis of an unusual pyrrole

The flavonoid components of New Zealand mānuka (Leptospermum scoparium) honey have been quantified in a series of 31 honeys of varying non-peroxide antibacterial activity to clarify discrepancies between previous studies reported in the literature. Total flavonoid content was 1.16 mg/100 g honey. The principal flavonoids present were pinobanksin, pinocembrin, luteolin and chrysin and together these represented 61% of the total flavonoid content. 1, 2-formyl-5-(2-methoxyphenyl)-pyrrole, which was weakly correlated with the non-peroxide antibacterial activity, was isolated from the flavonoid fraction and separately synthesised. 1 did not display inhibitory activity against Staphylococcus aureus in vitro and thus the origin of the correlation, which is still unknown, is not a direct contribution

Chinese medicine in the West 2009

In January 1985 The Journal of Chinese Medicine published an edited transcript of a discussion called ‘Acupuncture in the West’ between Peter Deadman, Ted Kaptchuk, Giovanni Maciocia and Felicity Moir. It was a particularly popular article and to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the JCM we decided to convene another discussion, in London in March 2009. Present this time were Peter Deadman (PD), Hugh MacPherson (HM), Daniel Maxwell (DM), Felicity Moir (FM) and Volker Scheid (VS). All are past or present practitioners of acupuncture and/or herbal medicine

Taming hazardous chemistry in flow: The continuous processing of diazo and diazonium compounds

The synthetic utilities of the diazo and diazonium groups are matched only by their reputation for explosive decomposition. Continuous processing technology offers new opportunities to make and use these versatile intermediates at a range of scales with improved safety over traditional batch processes. In this minireview, the state of the art in the continuous flow processing of reactive diazo and diazonium species is discussed

Blocked schur algorithms for computing the matrix square root

Applied Parallel and Scientific Computing: 11th International Conference, PARA 2012, Helsinki, Finland, June 10-13, 2012, Revised Selected Papers.The Schur method for computing a matrix square root reduces the matrix to Schur triangular form and then computes a square root of the triangular matrix. We show that by using either a standard blocking or recursive blocking the computation of the square root of the triangular matrix can be made rich in matrix multiplication. Numerical experiments making appropriate use of level 3 BLAS show significant speedups over the point algorithm, both in the square root phase and in the algorithm as a whole. In parallel implemetnations, recursive blocking is found to provide better performance than standard blocking when parallelism comes only from threaded BLAS, but the reverse is true when parallelism is explicitly expressed using OpenMP. The excellent numerical stability of the point algorithm is shown to be preserved by blocking. These results are extended to the real Schur method. Blocking is also shown to be effective for multiplying triangular matrices