100 Words

University of Warwick researchers Jonathan Solity and Janet Vousden carried out primary classroom research into an alternative reading strategy that teaches children to recognise just 100 words initially, which will do to read most written English, including books intended for adults. Adding an extra fifty words (as recommended by the national literacy strategy) meant children gained an understanding of only about 2% more of the texts.

The Early Reading Research Project reduced the incidence of children having problems with reading from 20-25% to less than 2%. It involved both phonics (the sound of letters and letter combinations) and sight vocabulary (recognising whole words from the letters in them).

While English appears to have a lot of irregular words, in fact a significant number are highly regular and could be taught through a very small number of skills. There are about 44 phonemes (sounds) but these are represented by a rather larger number of letter groupings. For example, an 'ee' sound might be 'ee' or 'ea' or 'ie'. By teaching children the 61 most common letter groupings, they can read around 70% of all the phonically regular words in adult literature.

The core 100 words accounted for 53% of all the words in a database of analysed adult texts, while just 16 words accounted for a quarter of all the words. Rather than trying to teach all the variations, the strategy focused instead on the most frequently occurring and 'phonic self-correcting'. For example, if a child learns that 'ea' has an 'ee' sound, they will initially trip over the phrase 'loaf of bread', but they know that doesn't make sense, so quickly correct it. The strategy could also help adults who struggled to read.

16 most frequent words: a, and, he, I, in, is, it, my, of, that, the, then, to, was, went, with.

100 high frequency words: a, about, after, all, am, an, and, are, as, at, away ## back, be, because, big, but, by ## call, came, can, come, could ## did, do, down ## for, from ## get, go, got ## had, has, have, he, her, here, him, his ## I, into, is, it ## last, like, little, live, look ## made. make, me, my ## new, next, not, now ## of, off, old, on, once, one, other, our, out, over ## put ## saw, said, see, she, so, some ## take, that, the, their, them, then, there, they, this, three, time, to, today, too, two ## up, us ## very ## was, we, were, went, what, when, will, with ## you.

BBC web site Friday 6th Dcember 2005

Man and Woman

In English we have the curious situation where 'man' and 'men' are also used to refer to 'men and women'. Over time the term for an adult male dropped out of usage, and the term for both genders was increasingly applied to males.

Old English, also known as Anglo-Saxon, is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southern and eastern Scotland between at least the mod-5th century and the mid-12th century.

• Mann or monn primarily meant an 'adult male human' but could also be used for a gender-neutral meaning of 'human', corresponding to Modern English 'person' or 'someone'.
• Wif meant 'female human'. With the suffix 'man' this became wifmann, then wimmann, then to wumman and finally to woman. The meaning of 'wif' narrowed to refer to a married woman - wife.
• Wer meant male human'. It survives in the form 'were' in werewolf.

Subsequent to the Norman Conquest, man began to be used more for 'male human', and by the late 1200s had begun to eclipse the use of 'wer'.

While the generic meaning of 'man' as referring to both genders declined, it is retained in, for example, everyman, mankind and no-man. With social changes in the late 20th century, new gender-neutral terms were coined: police officer, firefighter, sales assistant.

Basil

Sow: April in seed trays. Prick out into individual pots. Plant out in June. Seedlings are prone to 'damping off' (a fungal infection).

Care: Pinch off flowers as they appear as they coarsen the leaves.

Water: needs plenty of water as it grows.

Harvesting: Pick leaves from the stem tips, not the sides, to keep the plant bushy. And remove any flowers to prolong its life.

Allergies and Bacteria

Allergies are on the increase. In the industrialised west, around one third of people suffer from one or more allergies, whereas in hunter/gatherer tribes, only one on 1,500 people do. Interestingly, people in the west who are brought up in close proximity to animals, e.g. on a farm, have less allergies than those brought up in towns and cities. The steep increase in allergies in the last 30 years is too fast to be caused by genetic changes and is now thought to be related to bacteria.

Our bodies are hosts to a variety of bacteria - on our skin, in our mouths and in our guts. Gut bacteria, for example, not only help us to digest food but also seem to prime our immune system to recognise substances (e.g. pollen, foodstuffs) that are not harmful. People in the west have less variety in their bacteria than those in tribes living traditional lifestyles. Family members typically have similar bacterial species to each other, but allergic individuals have less bacterial variety than other family members.


The womb is a sterile place so we get our first bacteria at birth, as we pass through the vaginal canal, which itself changes to more lactobacillus species (known to have a protective affect) prior to birth. Our bacterial levels are then augmented via breast milk, which contains up to 700 species of bacteria. Other bacteria are ingested with food and as we interact with gardens, fields and woodland. But modern life is reducing the number of species of bacteria in some individuals.

• An increasing number of babies (around 25% at present in the UK) are born by Caesarian section, but a Norwegian study found that such babies are 52% more likely to suffer from asthma.
• Babies who spend time in incubators and intensive care units after birth have different combinations of bacteria from those born vaginally.
• These babies tend to have low levels of actinobacteria (in those with asthma) and bifidobacteria (in those with eczema).
• Allergic individuals have high levels of enterobacteriaceae, which is commonly found in intensive care units.
• Antibiotics not only kill bacteria that cause illness, but also kill beneficial bacteria in the gut. The use of antibiotics in early life (especially in the first year) appears to increase the risk of developing eczema by 40%.

Also:

• We spend far less time outside (and in contact with a variety of bacteria) than in the past - perhaps as little as 15% a day. 
• In paleolithic times, humans lived in small hunter/gatherer groups, perhaps as few as 20 to 30 individuals. With this size of population, only infections (e.g. intestinal worms) which did not kill the host would survive. By quietening down the immune system (which also became less sensitive to allergens), they would be tolerated and never completely eliminated. Crowd infections (e.g. measles) have taken their place but don't damp down the immune system.

Germ-free mice, bred in sterile environments, have a different lung structure to normal mice, which is damaged when exposed to allergens like dust mites, causing asthma like symptoms. Other research found that Clostridia bacteria could block peanut allergy in germ-free mice with no gut bacteria.

Faecal bacteriotherapy (or faecal microbial transplant) is a recent treatment for recurrent C. difficile infections, and increasingly for colitis and irritable bowel syndrome; it is also being investigated as a treatment for some neurological diseases, such as Parkinsons. It is now being speculated that it may be useful following antibiotic treatment to repopulate the gut flora, and even potentially as a treatment for allergies.

A sample of faeces from a healthy individual is treated to separate the bacteria from the food waste. The bacteria are then given to the patient by enema, colonoscope, nasogastric tube or naso-duodenal tube. Non-related donors (tested for a wide range of bacterial and parasitic infections) are preferred to family members (who may themselves carry C. difficile). Ongoing research aims to identify the important bacterial strains and to grow these anaerobically in the lab.

What should we do? Well, vaginal birth and breast feeding are ideal but not always possible. Boost bacteria levels by eating food that stimulates bacterial growth (fruit and vegetables). Probiotics provide limited help (but are not a cure for existing allergies). Antibiotics should be used only when necessary. Get outside (gardens, parks, or the countryside) as much as possible for more exposure to all sorts of bacteria. If you have a garden, the more types of plant you have, the better.

BBC Horizon programme Allergies: modern life and me, August 2014 and BBC website article 26 Aug. 2014.

Wikipedia Editing

Some pages on Wikipedia have proved controversial and biopgraphies of living people have proved particularly susceptible to malicious edits. In response, Wikipedia  previously kept such pages 'locked', sometimes for years; around 01.% of the 3.3m articles on the English Wikipedia are under edit protection.

Now a new system of editing is being trialled. The 'Pending Changes' tool is to be piloted with 2,000 pages, which will now be opened up to editing, even by anonymous and new users. Pending Changes works by having changes reviewed by trusted users before they appear on the main version of the article. A Pending Changes icon (a tiny magnifying glass near the article title) appears on the right side of any page that is part of the pilot.

Phil Bradley in CILIP Update, Aug. 2010