Learning stories, a form of narrative assessment, were used by teams surrounding two New Zealand children with high and complex needs. Learning stories are currently used by New Zealand early childhood teachers and highlight strengths-and interest-based learning in natural settings. This contrasts with specialists' assessments, which highlight decontextualised developmental skills. Team members including parents, teachers, support workers, health and education professionals received professional development on the use of learning story assessment and shared their stories at individual planning meetings. Goals for the children were collaboratively developed, drawing upon the different perspectives team members brought to the interpretation of learning stories. The project highlighted the empowerment of parents and educators and the strengthening of collaborative relationships. The approach accommodated the many perspectives held by individuals within the teams and successfully harmonised the skills-and strength-based assessment models. Challenges to the adoption of narrative methodologies in inclusive early intervention contexts were identified.

Deuterium NMR spectroscopy has been used to study the director dynamics of the nematic liquid-crystal system cetyl trimethylammonium bromide/D2O under the action of applied viscous torques. Shear forces were applied using a custom-built Couette cell that was introduced into an NMR superconducting magnet, so that its rotational axis was parallel to the magnetic field direction, along which the liquid-crystal director originally aligned. Subsequently, the inner cylinder of the cell was rotated continuously at different rates using a stepper motor. The resulting time evolution and ultimate steady-state orientation of the director, governed by the competition between the applied viscous torque with elastic and magnetic terms, was measured via observed changes in the deuterium spectrum. Using a simple gearbox allowed unprecedented access to a low-shear-rate regime in which, above a threshold shear rate, the director of part of the sample was observed to reorient, while the remaining part still aligned with the magnetic field. Subsequent increases in the applied rotational rate were found to increase the relative proportion of the orienting fraction. Spatially resolved NMR spectra showed that the orienting and field-aligned fractions formed separated bands across the gap of the Couette cell, with director reorientation being initiated at the moving inner wall. The behavior was found to be consistent with the often ignored variation in velocity gradient manifest across the gap of a cylindrical cell, so that as the angular frequency of the inner cylinder was increased the radial location of the critical shear rate required for reorientation traversed the gap. Once the applied rotational rate was sufficient to reorient the director of the entire sample, the dependence of the exhibited steady-state orientation on the average applied shear rate was measured. These results could be fitted to an analytical solution of the force-balance equation, made tractable by the assumption that the elasticity term was of minor significance and could be ignored. Additionally, the use of a numerical solution of the full force-balance equation, which explicitly includes elasticity and secondary flow and additionally allows the time evolution of the director orientation to be calculated, was investigated.

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The measurement of residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) exhibited by samples prepared in suitable alignment media can help in the elucidation of macromolecular structures. For any dipolar interactions that are not averaged to zero by molecular reorientations RDCs provide information about the possible orientations of the averaged interactions to the magnetic field. As such they contain information about the permitted relative positions of different motionally averaged bond vectors. This situation is often induced using nematic liquid crystalline phases with which the macromolecule under study interacts. While a single set of RDC measurements does not produce unique solutions for the orientation of each bond, multiple independent RDC datasets can be combined to restrict each bond to two diametrically opposed orientations. Attempts to obtain such datasets have primarily focused on performing experiments with multiple alignment media that interact with the macromolecule of interest in a different way. Other work has attempted to control the orientation of the media itself relative to that of the magnetic field. The latter has been explored using pre‐formed gels and might also be potentially realized using the application of different external fields during signal acquisition. This article seeks to clarify which approaches might generate independent RDC datasets and their utility in further restricting possible bond orientations using pictorial representations of simulated data.